


Soul Fate Determination

by LaughingSenselessly



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Childhood Friends, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up Together, Slow Burn, Supposedly Platonic Physical Intimacy, character deaths only of some who died in earlier canon seasons, minor bellina CL and flarke for Plot reasons, rating for canon-typical violence and sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:07:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 106,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23924356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughingSenselessly/pseuds/LaughingSenselessly
Summary: “You’re soulmated,” Bellamy says, and it’s exactly what Clarke feared his reply would be. She waves a hand as dismissively as she can.“You can still havefriendswhen you’re soulmated.”He watches her with dark eyes. “You can’t have friends like us.”--Soulmates AU. Clarke and Bellamy grow up together... but they’re not soulmates.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 634
Kudos: 931
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	1. soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was written for the very sweet Maggie, winner of my offering for the Fandom Trumps Hate 2020 charity auction. Maggie, I hope you like! Thank you so much for participating and for your generosity (and thanks to everyone else who bid!). :)
> 
> The prompt was basically that I could write anything as long as it had ~friends who get like very very physically intimate but Platonically~ in a modern setting. As anyone who has ever given me a prompt knows, i rarely adhere to the prompt and usually go way off the rails, and this is no exception! *laughter hiding real pain* but anyway, that is why this fic will have 3 parts instead of being the one shot i envisioned (most of the rough draft is written already). it just felt like the prompt required setup ok!!. that’s my excuse for this mess. apologies in advance, i am disgusted as well.
> 
> Other thanks I must extend: to MJ @wellamyblake for helping me crack this story idea with just two simple but genius suggestions, and Sjaan @readymachine, who took the time to beta-read for me and is saving me from a LOT of embarrassment lmao. I love you both.
> 
> Disclaimer: There are probably many factual mistakes throughout this fic particularly when it comes to legal, corporate, and security related things. Please excuse my lack of expertise!

Clarke Griffin is five years old when she meets her soulmate.

Her mother is having an important guest over at their house that day. Everyone dresses in their best. Clarke puts on her favourite sky-blue dress that the new housekeeper, Aurora Blake, says makes her look like a princess. Her mother wears her favourite suit. Her father refuses to put on a suit, but he dons a soft woollen sweater that brings out his eyes.

The guest is one Thelonious Jaha, who does business with her mother or something. Clarke catches the words “business merger” although she’s got no clue what that means. It’s all very confusing. Clarke doesn't care about all that, anyway. The adults talk, and leave her and Jaha’s son to play together.

He’s got big brown eyes and a gap-toothed grin. “I’m Wells.”

“I’m Clarke!” She’s so excited to meet someone her age that she hugs him immediately. He has a nice smile.

They run to the kitchen and Clarke shows him her crayon collection. They draw together for a bit. Wells stops to watch her.

“You’re better than I am,” he says.

Clarke glances at his drawing. “Yeah, I am. What’s that even supposed to be?”

He shrugs, not in the least offended. “It’s a cow, I like cows.”

“They’re cool,” Clarke agrees immediately. She’s never even seen a live cow, she just wants this boy to like her because she likes him.

Then she catches sight of something on his wrist. She grabs his hand to take a closer look. Just like everyone else Clarke has ever met, he has a tattoo on his wrist. Difference is, his looks exactly like hers. Identical. A chess rook.

Aurora Blake pauses in sweeping the kitchen floor to look at what they’re doing.

“My _goodness_ ,” she says with a smile. “We don’t always meet our soulmate this early. Your parents will be pleased.”

“What?” Clarke says. Wells is equally confused. So Aurora sets down her broom and explains.

It’s not a tattoo, not exactly. They’re soulmarks, and everybody is born with them, the same way they’re born with little tufts of hair and two eyes and a screaming mouth. But they mean something. And Aurora explains three things about them, in gentle, soothing tones:

One: it’s a _soulmate_ tattoo.

Two: Soulmates are the people you’re fated to spend your life with. The love of your life. They make life easier, they understand you, they’re the person you always have on your side. And no one, absolutely _no one_ else could be a better match for you than them.

Three: Your soulmate will have an identical tattoo.

“Clarke!” her mother calls from the doorway, cutting off the explanation. “Aurora, I’m so sorry, they shouldn’t be bothering you while you’re working—”

“It’s alright,” Aurora says with a laugh. “I have two of my own around their age at home.”

Clarke’s mother brightens. “Really? You should bring them here sometimes then! It would be nice for Clarke to have someone new to play with.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly, they’re two pieces of work—”

“Please do,” Abby says firmly. “That way you won’t have to worry about childcare. We have plenty of house staff that could look after them here. Truly, it’d be our pleasure—”

“Mom,” Clarke cuts her off, excited. She grabs Wells’ wrist. “Look! We’re the same!”

Abby glances their way for the first time, and does a double take. She looks more closely, and her lips spread into a grin. She raises her voice.

“Jake, Thelonious. You have to come and see this.”

—

Wells is over to play a lot after that. They learn how to ride bikes together. Their fathers teach them how to play chess, or at least try. And they also end up going to the same private school when first grade starts that fall.

Clarke’s parents are very happy about her soulmark. Clarke couldn’t care less about it, though. The identical chess rooks on her and Wells’ wrists are an interesting factoid about them that she can boast about and that’s it. She’s just happy to stomp in the mud with Wells outside when it rains, and to pick him first whenever they’re playing sports in gym class. He’s fun, and he quickly becomes her best friend, and that’s all that matters.

A few months after, Aurora shows up to work with two children in tow. Clarke’s drawing by herself at the kitchen table. Abby’s with her.

“Clarke,” she says.

Clarke makes a sound like, _I’m in the middle of something!_ She’s drawing a cow and it’s taking all her brain power. She’s gonna give it to Wells so it has to be perfect.

“Clarke,” Abby says again, this time in a warning voice. Reluctantly, Clarke looks up.

She locks eyes immediately with a boy. Curly hair. Freckles. Her gaze shifts to the girl next to him. She’s paler than him, but they have the same gently sloping nose. Aurora’s nose.

“This is Octavia and Bellamy,” Abby says. “Why don’t you show them the trampoline?”

“I’m busy,” Clarke says.

Abby gives her a second, more deadly look. Clarke hops off her stool.

As it turns out, Octavia is very chatty, which makes it all easy. Bellamy isn’t, but Clarke doesn’t mind. They jump on the trampoline for a long time and talk about anything and everything. Octavia’s a year younger than Clarke, and Bellamy a year older. The two of them are half-siblings.

“ _My_ daddy was mommy’s soulmate,” Octavia explains proudly as they jump. Clarke tosses Bellamy a glance. He seems bored with the conversation, staring off into the distance.

Octavia goes on. They go to a public school on the other side of town. This is the first time they’ve been allowed to come along to Aurora’s work. Octavia tells Clarke that they’ve been dying to get a trampoline at home but her mom says no and what did Clarke say to her parents to get one? And Clarke shrugs and said she never had to ask. She never has to ask for most things.

Octavia seems excited. “Maybe I’ll ask her! Oh, Bell, wouldn’t it be cool if we had one, too?”

Bellamy doesn’t say anything, again. Clarke wonders if he ever talks.

—

Over the next few years, the Blake siblings continue to accompany their mother to her biweekly housekeeping work in the Griffin mansion. Sometimes the house staff suggest something for them to do, but sometimes Octavia points at something and asks if they can play with it. She’s an adventurous type, sort of bossy too. Bellamy kind of just goes along with whatever his sister suggests. Clarke wonders sometimes if he has any feelings at all, at least until the one day they’re playing hide and seek.

Bellamy finds Clarke within five minutes, but then they spend hours and hours looking for Octavia, and that’s the first time he looks scared. Really, really out of his mind scared.

“I have to find her,” he keeps saying. “I have to.”

“We will,” Clarke says, puzzled at the distress in his voice. It’s the most she’s ever heard him talk. “She’s around here somewhere.”

Eventually, with the help of some of the house staff, they find Octavia—she’d somehow gotten herself trapped into a closet that locked from the outside—and she emerges crying hopelessly. Bellamy hugs his sister, and you’d think she almost died or something with how tight he clings to her. Octavia sobs on his shoulder and Clarke stands back, noticing Bellamy’s eyes are wet, as though he’d been trapped in that closet along with her.

So he loves his sister. That’s about all Clarke can gather from him. Sometimes she tries to draw him into conversation, but he only answers her questions, doesn’t say anything more than is needed to communicate. She can’t quite figure out his deal.

—

When she’s ten years old, she and Wells are biking up a hill and she gets a flat tire.

“You go ahead home,” she says with a sigh. They’re on the huge Griffin property, it’ll take a while to walk back.

But Wells gets off his bike too, and they walk together for a while. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. The Blakes are coming over, it’s housekeeping day. We’ll go for a swim or something, whatever Octavia wants.”

Wells hasn’t actually met the Blakes, but she’s told him enough that he knows about them. “What about what Bellamy wants?”

“How would I know what he wants? He never talks to me.” She huffs, kicking a rock out of her path.

Wells gives her a look. “That bothers you?”

He reads her too well. “Can you stop acting like a therapist?” she complains, and sees him hide a grin.

“Just curious, that’s all. You always talk about him like you’re frustrated.”

Because it disturbs her when people don’t like her. Especially when it’s for no reason at all. “Because! I’ve never done anything to him, as far as I can tell.”

“Is he mean?” Wells’ brows furrow. “I’ll deal with him if he is.”

That makes Clarke almost smile. She knows he could. He’s disarmingly reserved most of the time, but at school he’s picked and won fights with people twice his size. Usually for Clarke. “No… he just isn’t _nice_. I don’t get it.”

“Well, why don’t you ask him what his problem is?”

Clarke blinks. “Just… ask?”

“Yeah. What’s the worst that could happen? He won’t talk to you?”

Clarke half-laughs, conceding the point. As they make it over the hill and her house comes back into view, she says, “I hate it when you’re right.”

He bumps her shoulder. “No wonder you’re in such a bad mood all the time.”

—

Bellamy hates coming to the Griffin mansion.

Octavia loves it. Mostly she loves the glamour of it, the lifestyle there, more than she actually enjoys hanging out with Clarke Griffin. He’s the opposite.

Everything in that house, he despises. Everything in it is just a symbol of what he could never have.

Although he loathes coming here, he still does for Octavia’s sake, and he does his best to act like he doesn’t feel nauseous looking at all their wealth. After all, it’s his mother’s job on the line.

After Abby Griffin had invited—insisted, really—that Aurora bring her children, she had felt like she had no choice. She sat Bellamy and Octavia down and drilled a few things into them. _Be polite to your hosts. Have only one serving if they offer you food. Don’t steal anything. Don’t break anything._

“And be nice to Clarke Griffin,” Aurora finished. “Even if she’s not. I don’t care what she says or does. Don’t give her a reason to complain to her parents.” She paused there and gave four-year-old Octavia a meaningful glance. “Do you hear me, Octavia?”

Octavia paused in jabbing her paper sword at imaginary enemies long enough to look up. “What?”

Their mother sighed and looked at Bellamy. It was understood in that moment that he would take care of it.

And he did. Every time Octavia was on the verge of saying something rude to Clarke, he quickly steered her away. He made sure she didn’t break anything in their house. Sometimes when one of the house staff bought them lunch, he stopped her from taking too many sandwiches despite the fact that he was getting hunger pangs too. He also did his best over the years to make sure she didn’t say anything too personal.

Like the time Clarke’s dad—the famous Jake Griffin—took them all out for ice cream, and seven-year-old Octavia said while munching on her cone, “I wish _we_ had a dad.” And Clarke looked all surprised, and Jake Griffin uncomfortable. Bellamy immediately said to Jake, “I really like your movies, sir, what was your favourite role so far?” because he could tell Octavia was going to say something stupid, probably about how _their_ mother’s boyfriends never take them out for ice cream, they’re much more interested in taking her money to buy cigarettes and angrily breaking things in their apartment when she says no. His mother wouldn’t want _that_ to come out.

Most of all, over the years Bellamy made sure to be perfectly polite to Clarke, although she made him angry. Not that she was mean. Not at all. He just didn’t like the idea that he was supposed to be a pushover if she was. And she was always so nice, so gracious, as if he and Octavia should bow at her feet for it.

She invites them to her birthday party every year, but no matter Octavia’s begging, their mother refuses to let them go. Bellamy’s relieved for it, but also irritated, because what does Clarke expect? All her rich friends are going to get her big expensive presents. In his family, they can barely afford a cheap cake. She probably hopes to humiliate them.

He hates, too, when she goes off on her family vacations around the world, and brings them something back, like a seashell, or a tapestry, or a signed album from a famous singer her dad knows, or something stupid like that. It’s like she’s always rubbing it in their faces how above them she is. Octavia eats it up, though, while Bellamy fumes ever silently.

At least, until this particular day.

He’s eleven and it’s a regular cleaning day at the Griffin house. As per usual, they’re about to go off with Clarke—today for a swim—but Abby stops them. She says she wants to talk to them before they go off to play. Aurora gives Bellamy an anxious look and he squares his shoulders, ready for whatever he’s going to be told.

It’s not what he expects.

“A butterfly statue went missing from my study two weeks ago,” Abby says once they’re alone in one of the sitting rooms. “Right after you two came for your playdate. Do either of you have any idea where it went?”

Clarke stands awkwardly in the corner as Bellamy tries to sort through those words. Is she accusing them of stealing?

He realizes that’s exactly what she’s doing when she says, kindly, “I remember the three of you were in here. You won’t get in trouble if you took it.”

Well, Bellamy certainly didn’t steal anything. Which means his sister must have while he wasn’t paying attention. She never could help herself when it came to pretty things. Especially pretty things that looked like her soulmark.

He glances at her from the corner of his eye. But Octavia says nothing, apparently finding the carpet fascinating all of a sudden.

There’s a long silence, and Bellamy realizes one of them is going to have to confess, or else they’ll be seen as liars as well as thieves. He’s just drawing breath to say it was him when Clarke speaks instead.

“It was me. I broke it.”

Abby Griffin looks over at where her daughter is standing.

“I accidentally hit it off the table and it smashed,” Clarke says, her shoulders suddenly hunched in chagrin. “I cleaned it up by myself.”

Abby stares at Clarke. Her voice becomes a little more flat. “You should’ve told me right away.”

Clarke seems to shrink further into herself. “I was scared to tell you. I know you love it.”

Abby’s silent. Then: “We’ll talk about this later.”

Bellamy studies Clarke. She looks properly scared of the talking-to she’s going to get later. He almost believes her, too. Even rich princesses must be clumsy sometimes.

At least until her mother turns away, and a glimmer of something cunning passes over Clarke’s face before it’s gone. Triumph.

He stares at her. He doesn’t know what to think of it, not at all.

He’s silent as Abby dismisses them, and Clarke takes them through the house. She presents Octavia with a gift of a new swimsuit, which delights her. He tunes them both out and tries to figure out what Clarke’s game is.

To make Octavia indebted to her? No, Octavia’s already indebted to her for a thousand things. Take that designer swimsuit, which Bellamy knows his mother could never afford to buy. So, what? To pull a fast one on Abby Griffin just because? That doesn’t really make sense with what he knows of Clarke.

In the pool, he floats on his back and frowns at the sky while Octavia screams “CANNONBALL!” and throws herself into the water. Bellamy has enough time to hope she doesn’t do a belly flop before her impact sprays water everywhere.

Clarke’s sitting on a raft, drifting not too far from him. She splutters as she’s drenched from Octavia’s jump.

“Ugh,” Clarke says. “This pool is way too small.”

Too small? Too _small_? It’s gigantic. It’s bigger than his entire apartment. The annoyance flares in him so suddenly he can’t control his mouth for a second. “I guess that’s the biggest problem in your life.”

Silence.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He doesn’t say anything for a second, wondering how he’s supposed to back out of that comment. “Nothing.”

She sighs, and it sounds frustrated. “I know you want to say something to me. So spit it out, Bellamy.”

His name coming from her lips jars him a little. But he recovers quickly. He goes from floating on his back to treading water, so he can glare at her. And then he can’t stop the words pouring out at all: “Your dad’s a movie star. Your mom runs a gigantic company.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“You’re _rich_ ,” he says, and he’s suddenly angry, angrier than her. “Do you even realize how rich you are? Your pool is bigger than my bedroom. Just _one_ of the stupid ornaments on the dining table in _one_ of your stupid dining halls could pay our rent for an entire year. That’s how rich you are.”

Clarke’s silent, her lips thin. He laughs a little, because he might as well dig this hole a little deeper.

“Go ahead, then. Go ahead and tell me how it’s not all great. Tell me your secret sob story. What, Daddy doesn’t love you? Mommy’s too busy to give you attention? Does the princess feel lonely in her tower?”

“No,” Clarke says. She sounds puzzled, and it leeches Bellamy of his anger, leaving him with only his confusion. She doesn’t say anything else. None of this makes sense.

Slowly, Bellamy asks, “Why’d you take the fall for my sister?”

Clarke doesn’t play dumb. She meets his stare with an unflinching one of her own. “Because otherwise you would’ve.”

He blinks, bewildered. They stare at each other for a long, silent moment, that is only broken when Octavia comes splashing up to them.

“Would you two quit talking and _swim_ with me?”

And that’s the end of that conversation.

—

Later, Bellamy regrets his words. He imagines his mother getting a call from the Griffin mansion. _We no longer have need for your services. Thank you_. All it would take is a word from Clarke and a significant portion of his mother’s income would be gone. Because of his stupidity.

But the call doesn’t come. He doesn’t breathe any easier, though. He asks his mother if he can stop going with her to the Griffin mansion; he points out that he’s old enough to stay home anyhow.

Aurora takes his face in her hands and examines him like she might find the reason for his request written there. “I thought you liked going.”

Only for Octavia. To stop her from misbehaving. But he’s realizing now that Octavia’s particular brand of rudeness is harmless compared to his, because she doesn’t _mean_ it the way he does. Sure, if he’s not there she might say something insensitive to Clarke now and then, but that’s far better than risking himself having another outburst. “No, not really.”

His mother watches him carefully. “Well, come along for just one more day,” she says, picking up her bag.

She’s probably hoping he’ll change his mind so he can look after Octavia. “Fine.”

And so he goes. Reluctantly.

When he sees Clarke, bounding down the stairs to meet them, he feels himself tensing.

But she smiles.

“Hey,” she says, and then her eyes move to his sister. “Hey, Octavia.”

Today, the Griffin family’s driver—a man with a soulmark of a throwing star—takes them out to a mini-golfing course. The entire building is empty. It’s just the three of them and all the staff of the restaurant and course eager to please them. The entire staff just sits at their beck and call, watching them play. It’s creepy, but Clarke seems to think it’s absolutely normal. And Octavia, well, she thrives on her new ability to snap her fingers and get a Pepsi stuck in her hand.

Bellamy’s never played golf before. He sucks at it. Octavia’s about a hundred times better, and she wins the first game. She excuses herself to the washroom, and then he’s alone with Clarke. He doesn’t say a word to her and hopes he can keep it that way until Octavia comes back. He’s lining up to take his shot when Clarke says, “Can I ask a favour?”

He gives her a wary look.

“I liked… when you were honest with me, earlier,” she says. “Because you were right. I don’t understand—I don’t really understand what life is like for most people. For regular people, I guess. But I want to try.”

He takes his shot. The ball goes sailing way, way, way past the hole. “And as the housekeeper’s son,” he says with a sardonic smile, “it’s _my_ job to teach you?”

“No. That’s why it’s a favour I’m asking. I just want you to be honest. Speak your mind, instead of holding it in all the time.” A pause. “You can say no. Or just don’t say anything. I won’t mind.”

Clarke actually _liked_ that he chewed her out for her pretty princess life? Maybe he hasn’t quite figured her out yet after all. Well, if she wants the truth, then she’ll get it. “You really think someone like me can afford to say no to you?”

Her brows furrow as she takes her shot. The ball goes in. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he says, “You could get my mother fired if you wanted.”

She stares at him. “I wouldn’t do that.” She sounds hurt.

“And how am I supposed to know that? The point is, you _could_.”

“Well,” she retorts, “I wouldn’t. That’s never even occurred to me. I like your mom. She’s really nice.”

“She’s nice because she’s scared of you, too.” At her expression, he laughs. “Am I blowing your mind yet, princess?”

“I don’t _want_ people to be scared of me!” She sounds frustrated. “I didn’t even know that was a thing. See, this is why I like you.” He blinks, but barely has time to process that before she plows onward. “You’re telling it how it is. I’m just asking you to keep doing that. And if you say no, fine. But if you agree, then you can stop holding it in all the time.”

She’s more perceptive than he thought. But he can tell her frustration is real. And remembering that she took the fall for that butterfly statue, he finds himself believing her. Believing that she can handle the truth.

He lines up his next shot. Misses again. “Well, I’ll start by saying us being the only people in this place is not normal.”

“It’s just to give us privacy. That’s how it always is.”

“Not for us _regular people_ ,” he says with an eye roll. He throws his club down. “And by the way, if this is your idea of a good time, it needs work.”

She picks it up and hands it back to him, a smile tugging at her lips. “You’re just hitting the ball too hard. Here, I’ll show you.” She gives a gentle swing. Sighing, he mimics her. As he does, he glimpses the tattoo on her wrist. A chess rook.

By the time Octavia’s back, Bellamy’s lining up for another shot.

“Bell, you got this,” Octavia encourages. He takes a breath, and swings.

The ball rolls gently into the hole. Octavia whoops.

“You did it!”

“Only took fifteen tries,” Clarke says. Bellamy gives her a look. There’s a glint of mischief in her blue eyes. So the princess has got a sense of humour.

“Give me a break. I’m new to this,” he says.

Clarke pokes Octavia. “Your sister is new to it too, but she’s still kicking your ass. Face it, you just suck.”

Octavia barks a delighted laugh, and Bellamy mutters, “I never asked you to be honest with _me_.”

—

The next time Aurora picks up her bag and says she’s off to the Griffin mansion with Octavia, Bellamy hastily throws down his book. “Wait, I’m coming.”

He ignores his mother’s knowing smile.

—

Bellamy finds that when he no longer has to bite his tongue, he doesn’t mind hanging out with Clarke. She’s got wit about her, and is smart, and genuinely nice in a way that makes him realize all those birthday party invitations were probably completely innocent.

She’s nice, but she’s not immune to getting mad.

He finds that out one day when they show up while she’s still got other company around, one of them the mayor’s son and the other another actor’s daughter.

Those kids barely even see Bellamy and Octavia. They’re more interested in talking to Clarke.

They’re walking around in the backyard as a group, and they start ribbing her about Wells.

“All he does is follow you around at school,” the mayor’s son says. “That’s sort of pathetic.”

Clarke’s voice becomes ice cold. She only brings Wells up in passing, but Bellamy has always been able to tell how much she likes the guy. “He’s my friend. Don’t talk about him like that.”

“Yeah, yeah. Defend him. You’re just as much a loser as he is.”

The other kid guffaws. Bellamy’s eyebrows go up. These people are pretty much what he expected Clarke to be. He stays quiet, and grabs Octavia’s hand to remind her to do the same, wanting to stay off their radar.

Clarke doesn’t say anything more, mild-mannered as always. Or so she appears. Because as they walk over the pool deck on their way across the yard, she leads the little group a little closer to the pool edge. The other kids don’t seem to notice, so wrapped up in hearing themselves talk. At least, until she _slips_.

WIth a yelp, she grabs onto the mayor’s kid’s arm—in the way someone might to regain her balance—and yanks him down. Somehow, he not only goes down with her, but he slides over the edge and goes crashing into the pool. Bellamy almost can’t believe how well she pulls it off.

The kid gets submerged and comes back up, yelling his head off about his designer shoes getting ruined.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Clarke says with wide, apologetic eyes. “I’ll get a towel for your _shoes_.”

It takes all the sheer will Bellamy has to keep his poker face.

Later, when the other kids are thankfully gone, he tells her, “Maybe you should follow your dad into acting. Because I almost believed that was an accident.”

She glances at him from below her eyelashes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, but her lips curve up very slightly.

Something about that sly look makes him realize he doesn’t just not _mind_ hanging out with Clarke Griffin. He enjoys it, very much.

—

Once Bellamy starts becoming more friendly, Clarke finds that she grows to prefer him. There’s something calming about his quietness. Octavia’s fun, but her energy can sometimes get to be a little much for Clarke. Especially when she’s already got so much energy in her life, as a young girl growing up in the spotlight.

One night, she’s being driven back from one of her father’s awards shows, reclining in the back of a limousine and itching to take off this black, tight dress. She’d painstakingly picked it out with the help of her mother’s stylist to be as unassuming and unnoteworthy as possible. Fashionable but not too revealing for an eleven year old girl. Her makeup was done to the extent where people wouldn’t say Jake Griffin’s daughter was ugly but wouldn’t say she wore too much makeup for her age.

When her ride finally pulls up to the front gates, she exhales. Finally home. Inside, she collapses at the base of the spiral staircases, too exhausted to move up further although it’s ten at night. So she just sits there for a moment, alone. Her parents are still at the function, going to the afterparties.

“Hey,” says a familiar voice, and she looks up to see Bellamy at the doorway wearing rubber gloves. It _was_ housekeeper day, but she thought he’d be gone by the time she got home. “Rough night?”

“I’m rich. I don’t have rough nights,” she jokes weakly, and is rewarded with a smile. It’s become a running joke between them. “What are you doing?”

“Helping my mom finish up. She’s doing a deeper clean today, since none of you were here. Speaking of which, did your dad win?”

Clarke yawns, leaning back on her hands. “No, but he had three nominations, and he won last year, so I don’t think anyone cares too much.”

“Then why do you look so tired?”

Her eyes snap up to his. He seems surprised to have asked the question himself, but doesn’t backpedal.

“Because these things are tiring,” she says eventually. She feels like she’s doing more acting than her father around some of these celebrities. She feels like she’s more careful about what she says than her mother when introduced to some of her business associates. Luckily, Wells was at the function as well, so it was somewhat bearable with him at her side, offering his comforting presence, squeezing her hand when he could somehow tell the flashing lights of photographers were getting to be too much.

“Well, I better go back to work,” Bellamy says, and she snaps out of her thoughts.

“Can I help?”

He blinks. “You? Help?”

That makes her get up. “I know how to clean things. There must be something I can do. It’s so late. You should all go home.” Ignoring his incredulous look, she sweeps past him in her black dress.

Aurora and Octavia are scrubbing down cabinets in the kitchen and greet her warmly. Their warmth transforms into confused shock when Clarke takes a cleaning wipe and gets down on her hands and knees and starts scrubbing at one of the cupboards.

Aurora lets her do one cupboard door before sighing. “This isn’t your job, Clarke.”

“I want to help.”

“You’re making more of a mess,” Aurora informs her gently. Clarke deflates.

“Oh.”

“We’re finishing up anyway,” Aurora adds. Her voice is kind. “Why don’t you go upstairs and sleep? I’m sure your day has been long.”

It has, of course. Clarke drags herself to her feet, feeling stupid for trying. What does she know about cleaning or anything useful like that, anyway? She’s not helping anyone by being here.

She excuses herself, and is halfway up the stairs when Bellamy calls her name.

She waits for him to catch up. When he does, he pauses before speaking. “She didn’t mean it that way.”

“She’s right, though, isn’t she?” He’s silent, which she takes as agreement. “Was I really making such a mess?” She hates how small her voice is, but she can’t imagine how she could have screwed up wiping down cupboards.

Bellamy chuckles. “No. She just didn’t like watching you ruin your dress. Neither did I, if we’re being honest.”

Clarke looks down at it. Scuff marks where her knees had dug into the floor. She continues going up the stairs, slower now, passing her hand over her now-frizzy hair. He follows as she mutters, “The tabloids would rip me apart if they could see me right now.”

“Why?” He sounds genuinely puzzled. She snorts.

“ _Why_? They don’t need a reason. They’re just trying to sell copies. They’ll make something up about the dress. I looked _so_ not put together for my father’s award show, why are the Griffins raising their daughter like this?” He’s silent, and she goes on. “Once, they paid off someone at my school to tell them my grades. Another time, they did a poll on whether I should get plastic surgery when I’m older. They’re the worst.”

“Sounds rough.”

She snorts, thinking he must be sarcastic. “Okay, fine. I guess I don’t get to complain.”

“I’m being serious.” That shocks her enough that she stops to look at him. “Growing up in a spotlight can’t be easy.”

Well, that’s unexpected of him.

“Still kind of a first world problem,” he adds, and she half-laughs. That’s the Bellamy she knows and loves. Somehow, he makes her feel a little more normal. She wishes she could do something cool for him, too, now and then.

“Hey,” she says, struck with sudden inspiration, “Wanna go see my favourite spot in the house?”

Confusion clouds his eyes. “I thought you and O already dragged me to every room in this place.”

“Well,” she says, “it’s not _in_ the house, exactly.”

—

When they reach the rarely used, barren guest room on the top floor Clarke takes him to, he looks around. “ _This_ is your favourite place?”

He’s about to make some snarky comment, she can tell. Clarke rolls her eyes while opening the window. She throws one leg over the sill.

He starts forward. “Clarke—”

“It’s okay,” she says, throwing her other leg over the sill. “I’ve done this a million times. I won’t fall.” With a bit of maneuvering, her feet find the siding, and the roof that slopes at a gentle angle, gentle enough that she can easily climb onto it from this window.

The night is a bit cool for this, but she doesn’t care. She scoots further up the roof and breathes in the sweet, crisp air. She feels lighter already.

When he climbs beside her, he says, gruffly, “Your dress is torn.”

She looks down and sees she’s split it. A lot. Up to mid-thigh. “Oh.” Serves the dress right, really, for limiting her range of motion all night. She points upwards. “Now look.”

He follows her gaze. The sky is beautifully dark and starry tonight, and so very quiet. It takes her breath away. As they look up, she says, “You know, I’ve only ever shown Wells this place.”

“What’s so special about it?” he asks, breaking the spell. She frowns.

“You don’t get it?”

“It’s just the sky.”

“No, it’s not.” She frowns, trying to figure out how to explain. “The sun goes down and you get to see the rest of the galaxy right from earth. There’s absolutely nothing between you and the stars, except distance. You’re just part of it. Part of something bigger.” She tilts her face up to it. “Up here, you realize you’re nothing in comparison to the universe.” And that anonymity is a wonderful reprieve.

She finally looks back at him, and he’s already gazing at her, a soft, rather indiscernible look on his face.

“You don’t get out much, do you?” he says finally, and she frowns.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Do you ever leave home if it’s not _sanctioned_ by your mom?”

The way he says it makes her frown. “I guess not. I can’t just go out for a walk by myself, or I might get recognized. It’s dangerous.” She’s basically just parroting lines her parents, her drivers, the entire house staff have always told her.

A glint enters his eye. “We’ll see about that.”

—

She doesn’t quite understand what Bellamy’s referring to, at least until he shows up the next Saturday to her house.

“A Mr. Bellamy Blake here to see you,” says one of the butlers, appearing at her room door. “Shall we let him in?”

She frowns. What? It’s not cleaning day. She sets down her sketchbook. “Yeah.”

She ends up trailing downstairs though, waiting for him to be let in, and then breaks into a smile. He’s wearing a backpack, curls messy on his forehead, and looking irritable as usual. Fondness grows in her stomach. “Hey.” Pause. “Where’s your sister?”

“Not here,” he says. “Can we talk?”

She nods, and, ignoring the curious stares of the house staff, leads him up to her room. “What’s going on?”

He dumps the contents of the backpack on her bed. “We’re going out.”

She stares. A red wig, a baseball cap, glasses… it clicks. “Bellamy, I can’t—”

“Fine,” he interrupts. “But don’t say I didn’t give you the choice.”

He starts gathering everything back up.

“Wait, wait. Where would we even go? What would we do?” she says, exasperated. He stops and arches a brow.

“Whatever the hell we want.”

She chews her lip. It’s dangerous. Irresponsible. If her mother were here instead of across the country dealing with company stuff, she’d have her head.

Clarke picks up the wig. “I’m in.”

—

They sneak out.

It’s not spectacularly hard. Once Clarke gets into the wig and sunglasses and cap, she starts feeling like quite the rebel, and thinking like one too. Enough that she doesn’t feel guilty sneaking past the house staff and exploiting every weakness their security has that she’s noticed over the years. And then there’s the bent part of the fence on the west side of the property that lets her out. It’s such a stupid plan that it actually works.

They’re walking down the road and no one even looks twice at her. It’s thrilling. She could do anything she wants right now.

“How’d you even think of doing this?” she asks him. He shrugs.

“One time, Octavia got banned from a school dance. She was in a fight,” he explains, and yeah, somehow that makes complete sense. “Anyway, she really wanted to go. I snuck her in. Disguised. Now, where do you wanna go?”

She thinks about that. “Take me somewhere _you_ go,” she says. “Somewhere you go all the time without even thinking about it.”

“You mean, where the regular people go?”

She jabs him in the side. “Yes, exactly.”

She’s not sure what she expected, but he takes her to the library.

It’s a tall building that looks ancient on the outside, like the Coliseum. But inside, everything is new and modern and bright. Clarke takes in the place with wide eyes. So. Many. Books. And so many people, from kids to seniors, who walk by her without a second glance. A young librarian, stocking new magazine editions, looks up and smiles at them both in greeting. Clarke tugs her cap lower and pats the red hair of her wig. Nervously, she says, “It went okay when you snuck Octavia in, right?”

“No,” he says. “She got found out and we both got suspended for a week.”

She gapes at him. He grins a roguish grin.

“Relax, princess. No one’s going to expect to find _you_ at the local downtown public library.” He leads her to a nook of children’s books, and picks up one of the graphic novels on the shelf. She glimpses his soulmark as his sleeve shifts—a stylized crown. “O loves this series.”

She peeks over the shoulder at the colourful covers, promising adventures to every corner of the earth and beyond. A smile tugs at her lips. “Yeah, I bet. What about you?”

“Me?” He sounds surprised to be asked. When she nods, he scratches the back of his neck. “I like everything.”

She waits, but he doesn’t offer more. “There’s got to be things you like better than others.”

“My mom used to read us myths. Old stuff. Greek heroes and gods and all. I still like it.”

He looks so nervous, like she might judge him for it. She smiles. “You come here all the time?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?” he grunts.

Still grinning, she doesn’t answer. It’s just, she loves collecting these little details about him. There’s the gruff, hotheaded, sometimes rude Bellamy, and then there’s this softer, bookish, thoughtful Bellamy. And she likes them both.

They drift around the library together for a while, and then Clarke sits down on the outside deck to people-watch while waiting for Bellamy to take out his books at the checkout counter. No one looks at her as they pass. It’s perfect. She forgets who she is entirely.

At least, until she’s rudely reminded by a magazine thrown in her lap.

She looks up. Bellamy’s standing in front of her, bag of loaned books over his shoulder and an inscrutable look on his face.

“You’re soulmated,” he says. It sounds like an accusation.

She blinks and looks down at the magazine. One of those tabloids, the newest issue just out last week. It’s a picture of her and Wells at that awards show they both went to, actually; holding hands. The intertwined hands are zoomed in on, showcasing their identical soulmarks. The front cover says JAKE GRIFFIN’S DAUGHTER AND HER SOULMATE SPOTTED OUT!

Clarke had already known about this one. She reads the tabloids despite knowing she shouldn’t. And if Bellamy did, too, he would know already that she had a soulmate. The press has covered it a few times when the news was slow. “What? You know about Wells. I’ve told you about him a hundred times.”

“But _this_ never came up? That he was your soulmate?”

Now she’s confused. “Was it supposed to?”

His expression shutters. “No, I guess not.” He begins walking away.

She’s even more confused. Why is he mad? She can’t sort it out in her head.

He’s several steps ahead when she gets it. It’s an important part of life, for most people, these soulmarks. There was an agreement between them to be honest with each other. Especially about important things.

With a frustrated sigh, she tosses the magazine aside, catches up to him and grabs his wrist. He jerks away as if burned—as if she’s burned him through his own soulmark.

“Listen, Bellamy,” she says. “I haven’t mentioned that bit about Wells. But that’s because it didn’t really matter. Not because _you_ didn’t matter. I’m sorry.”

His frigid expression melts somewhat. “Don’t—don’t say sorry,” he mutters. “You’re right. It doesn’t matter.”

There’s an odd moment of silence between them, where, inexplicably, wildly, Clarke thinks that actually it _does_.

But then it’s gone, and he’s saying, “Well? Should we get back? Did you get your taste of the regular-person life?”

She grins, relieved, and pushes up her sunglasses. “Yeah, and I think it agrees with me.”

He gazes at her. “That it does.”

—

Somehow, it becomes common practice for Clarke and Bellamy to hang out. Outside of his mother’s housekeeping days. Without Octavia. He becomes another friend that the house staff grow used to seeing around.

She introduces him to Wells, _finally_.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Wells says when they meet at a football game Clarke had dragged Bellamy along to.

Bellamy tugs down his cap. “Same here.”

Clarke’s eyes dart between them, inexplicably nervous. She just wants them to like each other.

They don’t say much else before Wells’ dad comes back from the concession with popcorn and hotdogs, and the game begins.

Afterwards, they all go back to Clarke’s house and Wells suggests they play chess. Bellamy loses, of course. He’s smart but he doesn’t have the patience for the game.

Then it’s time for them to leave, and Clarke still can’t tell whether they liked each other. It makes her anxious. She asks them both later if they want to hang out again as a group, maybe go see a movie. Except on the night of, she finds out she can’t, that her father has a function and he wants the whole family to go to it. She cancels at the last minute, but the next day Wells tells her Bellamy and him had met up anyway.

“We didn’t go to the movies though. We went to the library.”

She can’t quite believe what she’s hearing. “You went to the _library_ together? Without me?”

“Yeah, sorry. I felt kind of bad about hanging out without you.” He looks worried that she’d be mad. She manages to hide her delighted grin.

—

Bellamy, after much begging, finally takes Clarke to his apartment, where his mother and him and Octavia make her a big dinner. This time, they let Clarke help in the kitchen. Bellamy keeps shooting Octavia furtive looks until she goes to her bedroom and comes out with a butterfly statue and an apologetic look in her eyes.

Clarke laughs. “Keep it,” she tells her.

Clarke invites him and his sister over to try the most expensive foods she can get the chefs to conjure: caviar, foie gras, oysters among them. She gets a kick out of watching their reactions.

(“This… is what you eat?” Bellamy asks. He looks a little sorry for her.)

Bellamy takes her to a local arcade in disguise, where Clarke absolutely thrashes him at some Space Invaders game, he dominates at skee ball, and then they both flail around at Dance Dance Revolution until they collapse on top of each other, wheezing with laughter.

Sometimes they don’t do anything exciting at all. Sometimes, they just lie on the roof and look at the stars. Sometimes, they just walk around the perimeter of the property, talking about nothing and everything and letting silence become comfortable between them. Sometimes, they study for their respective tests together on Clarke’s bed and wake up from afternoon naps with tangled limbs.

A lot of the time he talks about his sister. That’s a love Clarke envies, being an only child. But sometimes he talks more like he’s her father than her older brother.

When she points that out to him, he gives her a glare. But eventually, when she’s gotten the giggling out of her system and asks him earnestly to forgive her, he tells her how his stepfather—Octavia’s father—died when they were young, and his mother fell sick.

“I thought she was physically sick,” he says with a somewhat grim smile. “Because she spent all her time lying on the couch under a blanket drinking ‘medicine’, or in the bathroom throwing up. Now I know she was an alcoholic.”

Their home fell into a mess and disrepair. Aurora’s friends tried to help her with the children, but they couldn’t be around all the time. There were many nights they didn’t eat at all. And his mother drank too much one night, Bellamy tells Clarke. He was six years old and found her slipping in and out of consciousness and although he doesn’t remember much from that night, he remembers begging his mother to stay with him until the ambulance came, and his mother becoming scared too, like she’d realized what she’d done, and telling him to take care of his sister, that she was his responsibility now.

It was also Aurora Blake’s wake up call. She woke up in the hospital and called a friend and got herself a housekeeping job, and then another, and another, and that was how she started working at the Griffin mansion.

“I don’t think she even remembers what she said to me,” Bellamy admits. “She was too out of it. But I’ll never forget.”

Clarke sits there, sort of stunned. A lot about Bellamy suddenly makes more sense. He becomes quiet for a long time after that, and she wonders how many people he’s told this story to before. Maybe she’s the first. But no, she dismisses that thought. She’s not that special, she thinks.

At least until one afternoon she’s talking to Octavia at the poolside, and she asks if Bellamy ever heard back on his application for that volunteer position at the library. Octavia gives her a funny look.

“He applied for something at the library?”

Clarke gets the sense she wasn’t supposed to say anything. That it was something Bellamy was keeping close to the chest, in case he didn’t get it.

When Clarke doesn’t reply, the furrow between Octavia’s brows deepens.

“What?” Clarke asks nervously, splashing her feet in the water.

“Nothing.” Octavia pauses. “It’s just, my brother tells you things he doesn’t tell anybody.”

If her parents notice her newfound closeness with the housekeeper’s son, they don’t say much. Or at least, not at first.

When Clarke’s thirteen, her mom decides it’s time to start teaching her about the family business, Arkadia Pharmaceuticals and Biotech.

Clarke starts to develop a headache while her mom paces around her study, explaining the opioid they had developed that had made the company rich. “Can we cut this short?”

“No,” her mother says. “You might be leading this company someday. It’s important that you start learning this now. What are you smiling about?”

“Nothing,” Clarke says. “I just know Bellamy will never let me live it down if I become a _CEO_.”

Her mother stares at her for a second, then promptly walks over and sits down next to her at the table. Uh-oh. A lecture is coming, Clarke knows it in her bones.

However, the topic isn’t quite what she expects.

“I know you and Bellamy are close,” Abby says. “But I just hope you don’t get _too_ close.”

Clarke blinks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Her mother is silent for a moment, as if trying to formulate her message correctly before speaking. “I know teenagers like to act out, rebel by messing around with someone who isn’t their soulmate, and that’s fine, for the most part. But Clarke, you’re already soulmated. Aurora’s son is a good boy, and there’s no need to break his heart. Not when you’re going to marry Wells one day.”

Marry Wells?

For some bizarre reason, Clarke had never thought that far ahead. She’d never thought, truly and deeply, about what being soulmated to Wells _meant_. Or at least, she’d avoided it. She’d ignored the implication in all the married couples around her with matching tattoos on their wrists. She’d opted out of reading the articles in those tabloids about how “cute” she and Wells were together.

The thing is, she loves Wells. With her whole heart. He understands her, and it’s easy between them, and they come from the same sort of life. But the prospect of being with him—being with him _that_ way—doesn’t sit right at all.

“What if I don’t want to marry him?” she blurts. Her mother stares at her, confused.

“Clarke, he’s perfect for you. That’s what a soulmate _is_. You’re maybe too young to understand it yet, but you’ll want to marry him, trust me.” She smiles gently. “I resisted Jake, for a while. Even with all his dashing looks. But eventually, we all come around.” She holds up her wrist, displaying her cloud soulmark. “And it just ended badly with the people I tried to be with before him. Don’t ruin your friendship with Bellamy is all I’m saying, Clarke. Not worth it.”

Clarke’s silent, and looks at her soulmark. She’s loved it all her life. It was like a compass leading her to Wells, her oldest friend. But suddenly it feels like a chain.

She lowers her wrist, trying to push those thoughts away. This is the whole point of it, to guide people to the right person. To make love easy. There’s got to be something absolutely wrong with her that it scares her instead.

So she simply nods at her mother’s expectant look. But Abby Griffin isn’t done. She leans forward, clasping her hands on the table and wearing a quite serious expression on her face.

“Speaking of which, do we need to have the birds and the bees talk?”

—

When Bellamy is sixteen and Clarke fifteen, Clarke tells him animatedly that she’s scored her first movie role.

“You mean,” he says, “ _nepotism_ got you your first movie role.” She jabs him in the arm. He fights a grin.

They’re sitting on the roof with the stars and moon, passing a bottle of the expensive wine Clarke had stolen from her father’s liquor cabinet between them. The night sky has grown on him.

“You have to admit it’s kind of exciting,” Clarke says. “It was so unexpected. They offered when I was visiting my dad on set. It’s a tiny role. I’m going to be a grocery store clerk who shoots a robber and saves my dad’s character. Want to come watch me embarrass myself?”

Bellamy considers. “Are you sure about this? The tabloids are going to be on you even worse if you start showing up in movies.”

Her smile dims. “It’s just for fun, to try it. I wasn’t thinking about that.”

Silence falls. He can tell that what he said has troubled her. He curses himself and his fumbling, brutal honesty, even though she asked for it. “Aren’t you gonna ask me how _my_ life is going?”

It works. Distracted, her smile returns, and she leans her head on his shoulder. “Yes. Tell me everything. How’s your job going?”

Bellamy’s volunteer position helping coordinate events for children at the library had eventually become a paid job. Good pay, in fact. “Fine.” More than fine. He loves it. “Saving up money.”

“Finally going to buy that jeep?”

“Maybe.” Definitely. But he wants to keep his decision a surprise. He wants to see Clarke’s face when he drives up in a big ass rickety jeep. He sees this particular vehicle all the time biking past the used car dealership on his way to school. He calls it the Rover in his head, mostly because it looks like the opposite of a luxury Range Rover. No one buys it because it’s clearly a piece of junk. But after taking a car mechanics class, he’s become taken with the idea that it might be a fun challenge to try to fix it up.

Clarke doesn’t ask anything else. He likes that about her, too. That she doesn’t push him to talk the way some people do. If anything, it makes him say more. “Octavia’s loving her karate class.”

“Yeah?”

He grunts. “She thinks she’s Bruce Lee.” A smile spreads on his lips even when he says it.

Clarke huffs a soft laugh and tosses her head back, her hair spilling over her shoulders. She has it completely down today. He gazes at her, the way he often does when she’s gazing at something else. She’s beautiful the way the starry sky is; endlessly, and breathtakingly, and too far away to reach.

Suddenly she bolts upright. “Look! Did you see that?”

He looks where she’s pointing. Nothing but sky. “What?”

“A shooting star!” She frowns. “I swear I saw something for a second.”

Bellamy picks up the half empty bottle next to them. “Are we sure this is just wine?”

“Ha, ha.” She sinks back. “I swear it was. Like I was catching just the tail end of it.”

Bellamy takes a swig from the bottle. “Maybe it was a falling spaceship.”

She waves her arms at the sky animatedly. “Who knows? The universe is too big for it to be just us.” The cork of the wine bottle flies out of her hand and bounces off the roof. She frowns. “Maybe there’s planets out there where gravity is upside down.”

“Maybe there’s planets where there’s better tasting alcohol,” Bellamy puts in.

“Maybe there’s planets where there’s two suns instead of one.”

“Maybe there’s planets where there are two-headed deer.”

“Maybe there’s planets where there aren’t soulmarks.”

Bellamy stares at her. Her cheeks are flushed, and her smile fades a little the longer he looks at her.

“What?” she says, almost a little defensively. “Maybe there is. Wouldn’t that be something?”

Bellamy takes another sip of the wine, a rather long one. It certainly would be something. He just can’t decide if it would be better or worse.

If people didn’t have soulmarks, there’d be a lot less order to things. People wouldn’t know who to love. They’d make far more mistakes. The divorce rate would be higher than the negligible percentage it is now. Soulmates make love and life easy, that’s been drilled into him enough times. But a love that intense is also devastating. His mother showed him that, when Octavia’s father died.

And if everyone’s got a soulmate, the bad people in the world do, too, and he knows that firsthand. The men his mother invites into their home are usually bad people, who get mad and break things and yell at her and once even beat her when he was too young to stop it. Then there’s his own father, who knocked Aurora up and then left. He wonders how those men even have souls let alone soulmarks, but then again, maybe if Aurora was their soulmate, they wouldn’t do those things to her at all. Maybe it’s out of their control that they can’t love her enough. Would they be kinder on a planet without soulmarks, a planet where you can never be sure if the person you’re mistreating could be the love of your life?

“I don’t know about that,” he says eventually. “On this planet, you have Wells.”

When he first met Clarke’s soulmate almost three years ago, he couldn’t help but hone in on the chess rook tattoo on his wrist. Same as Clarke’s. It sort of hit him like a truck.

Not everyone meets their soulmate. Even fewer meet their soulmate as kids. It’s just another stroke of luck in Clarke’s charmed life, he’d thought bitterly, and then told himself that was the only reason he was bitter.

“I love Wells,” Clarke agrees. Silence. Bellamy raises an eyebrow, now unbearably curious.

“But?”

She ducks her head a little, and her blonde waves fall in front of her profile, so he can no longer see her expression. “I kissed him, you know. A little while back.”

Bellamy automatically raises the bottle and takes another long, long, long swig. Then another, for good measure, before he speaks. “And?”

“It didn’t feel like anything. We agreed to just leave it alone for now.”

She’s so silent for so long he sets the bottle down and reaches to push her hair away from her face, and is startled to see her eyes are glistening with _tears_.

“Clarke,” he says, startled. Her shoulders rise and fall unsteadily with a silent sob. He doesn’t know exactly what has her so sad, but he’s seized with the desire to make it _better_. “Talk to me.”

She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Isn’t it supposed to _feel_ like something?”

Bellamy mulls that over. He’s kissed a few people at school. Dated Roma when she came onto him after her last breakup, but that didn’t last. Of course it didn’t—they weren’t soulmates.

“Sometimes it doesn’t at first. Maybe you just need practice.” She’s still looking completely miserable, and his body is starting to feel very, very warm with all the alcohol. Impulsively, he says, “You could practice with me.”

She whips her head around to look at him. He regrets the words immediately. That was definitely not the right thing to say. It sounds like he’s coming onto her, which he’s _not_ —

But she looks like she’s considering it. Maybe it was the right thing to offer… it doesn’t matter anyway, does it? They’re not soulmated. It would be purely figuring out mechanics—

Clarke leans in and kisses him, softly, and he feels as though he’s been struck by lightning.

He recovers. He kisses her back, and the wine-drunk warmth in his stomach grows, and grows. She wraps her arms around his neck, and he melts into her soft embrace. After a few moments, she seems to become emboldened; she pulls him on top of her, and he rolls with it. His foot hits the wine bottle on his way, and it falls with a _thunk_ on its side and rolls off the roof, but Bellamy doesn’t even hear it hit the ground. The sound of his heart thumping in his ears is too loud.

Clarke’s hands thread through his hair, but he keeps his braced on either side of her head. She sighs against his lips in the short moment they part for air, and then their mouths slide together again; first this way, then that.

He was totally wrong. She’s a pro at kissing. Or at least, she’s a pro at kissing _him_.

She must realize this too. They’ve already passed the time marker that would read _you both realized her kissing technique is just fine_ and right now they are passing the time marker for _it could definitely get awkward past this point_ and he still doesn’t care. He just cares about how good it feels to be this close to her.

When they finally stop kissing, it’s because they’re both so out of breath they really do have to. She keeps her arms firmly locked around his shoulders, though, and neither of them move. He drops his face into the crook of her shoulder, gasping for air. His knees are digging painfully into the roof from the awkward positioning, although he barely noticed it before, he was so overwhelmed in her. Seriously, _what the hell was that_?

He feels Clarke rest her chin on the top of his head. He can tell she’s going to say something, and he braces for it.

But she doesn’t try to say it was kissing practice, or that it didn’t mean anything. As always, Clarke surprises him.

“I know we’re not soulmated, but I still liked that.”

Her words, so carefully assembled, jolt his heart. He swallows. He starts to rise off her, and she lets him, but when he settles back into sitting position, she grabs his hand.

“Bellamy, don’t. Let’s not let this be awkward, or weird. I know it kind of was—”

“Damn, Clarke, you think?” he says, and they both kind of laugh, kind of nervously.

Then she says, quietly, “I just… whatever we are… I want to keep it.”

“I don’t want us to change either,” he says readily, and at once, it’s done. The tension eases. She looks around.

“Where’s the wine?”

“I kicked it off the roof.” He rubs the back of his neck, but she’s grinning.

“That was a five thousand dollar bottle, you know.”

“Really? Cuz it tasted like shit.”

She laughs and they lean into each other. Instead of awkward, it almost feels even _more_ comfortable to touch her now, like throwing his arm over her shoulders doesn’t have the same _weight_ to it that it did before tonight. He can just do it, thoughtlessly, the same way she can press a kiss to his cheek and it just feels… right.

“Kissing you is fun,” Clarke says. “I’m sort of jealous of Roma now.”

“Roma’s ancient history.”

“What did you do?”

“Why do you always think _I_ did something?” he complains, playfully, because that’s the rare sort of mood Clarke is capable of pulling out of him. “Maybe she broke _my_ heart. Maybe we had a tragic love story and she said we couldn’t be together, did you ever think of that, Clarke?” Without warning, he starts tickling her, and she giggles uncontrollably, nearly falling over in her attempt to get away from him. “Ever think of _that_?”

They’re both grinning when he finally lets her squirm away from him, now happy tears running from her eyes, and god, he’s so glad they don’t have to change.

—

They don’t kiss again, but they touch with more frequency.

Clarke does her role in her father’s spy movie, and it’s unexpectedly off-putting to see her act, although she’s good. He and Wells are eventually sent off set guffawing. When they’re let back in, she’s so pouty he takes her aside and kisses her temple in apology.

These physical gestures no longer send a thrill of newness through him, nor when they brush shoulders or she touches his back or he grabs her hand. It feels absolutely normal, and comfortable, and good.

A few months later, Bellamy drives his new jeep straight up to the gates of the Griffin mansion and waits there. Usually by now the gates are already open. Not today, though. Today he has to turn off the ignition and clamber out to the intercom and press the doorbell. He jabs it three times in a row.

No answer. He pushes his hair out of his line of sight irritably. It’s housekeeping day, so his mom must be in there, although clearly busy. He’s late because he was dropping Octavia off at this new martial arts class she’s taking. Luckily, he also knows the code to directly call Clarke’s cellphone.

“Hello?” Clarke’s voice is distant, on speakerphone he’d guess.

He can’t help but feel his irritation soften slightly. “Clarke?”

Another voice speaks, faintly. “Is that Bellamy?”

Wells. Bellamy presses the intercom button again. “Clarke, the house staff must all be on break or something, because no one’s letting me in.”

“Maybe they’re not letting you in because you’re an asshole,” Wells suggests.

“Cute.” Bellamy suddenly spots movement from beyond the fence. “Wait, hold on, I think I see the groundskeeper.”

“I can always come down and let you in,” Clarke says. “I’m just on the roof with Wells, but we’re going back inside now.”

But he’s already moving away from the intercom, towards where he can see through the slits in the fence, to the groundskeeper.

But something’s wrong. The footsteps are lurching, uneven.

“Bellamy?” Clarke’s voice floats from the intercom, but he barely hears. His footsteps move quicker, and then halt to a stop.

The groundskeeper is clutching his stomach. His grey shirt is shiny and sticky with something dark.

It catches the sunlight. Bright, red, blood. His eyes are wide, mouth opening to—ask for help?-- but he collapses.

Bellamy stares in horror for a split second. Clarke’s voice comes from the intercom again. “Bellamy, you big baby. Don’t give me the silent treatment.”

Her voice is light, teasing. And he both envies her and pities her in this moment. Because in the pit of his gut, he knows. He knows that none of the house staff are on break. There’s a different reason no one is answering the intercom.

He knows that their lives are about to change. He doesn’t know how he knows it. He just does.

But she doesn’t yet, and he almost doesn’t want that for her. He wants her to stay in her charmed world.

Clarke sighs over the speaker. “I’m coming down then.”

That gets him moving. In a flash, he’s back at the intercom. “Clarke, whatever you do, don’t leave that room.”

“What?”

“Wells, too,” he says hurriedly. “Lock your door. Call the police. Your groundskeeper’s dead. I’m coming.”

Now she sounds scared. “Bellamy, what—”

But he’s already climbing the front gates. There’s no time to answer all of Clarke’s questions. And he trusts that she’ll do what he said.

He’s not a pro at climbing, and the gates are tall and not exactly easy to get over—usually it deters Jake Griffin’s fans, and if it doesn’t, the security does. But no one comes and stops Bellamy. The hard metal bites into his palms, and his arms strain to heave him over the top, but adrenaline gets him through.

When he crashes to the ground on the other side, he hardly feels the bruises he’ll surely have later. He scrambles to the groundskeeper’s body. His eyes are glassy. There’s nothing to be done. Bellamy lets out a breath. The man had always been kind to him as a child. A lot of people in this house have been kind to him.

And his mother—horror rises in his throat—his mother is in there. He rises and sprints through the grounds.

The lawn is insanely huge, and it feels like it stretches even bigger for this particular sprint across it. It takes an age to go around the house, to the gardener's entrance in the back. This is one of those times he really wishes he could rationalize owning a cell phone—but he’d always put that money to Octavia’s martial arts classes instead, so today he has to find a way in.

He punches in the gardener’s code and slides into the house. He only stops to grab a golf club leaning against the wall.

He goes slowly and silently up the stairs, straining his ears for sound. Nothing. He makes his way to the guest bedroom, where the door has been locked. He knocks, whisper’s Clarke’s name.

The door opens a tiny bit. Clarke’s scared blue eyes peer through the crack, and the door opens further. He quickly slips inside.

Wells is just inside, holding a metal shower rod. Clarke beside him with a softball bat. They’ve armed themselves too. Clarke grabs his hand, looking down at him.

That’s when he realizes how much blood is on his hands, his arms. The groundskeeper’s blood. Bile rises in his throat, and he squeezes Clarke’s hand once before letting go.

“What happened?” Clarke asks in hushed tones. He fills them in, clipped. Wells rubs his face. Clarke’s jaw sets.

“My dad was in the kitchen,” she says. “What if…” No one fills in the blanks; no one needs to. Jake Griffin has had plenty of close calls with stalkers and other danger. It comes with his job, and now…

Clarke lifts her chin. “I’m not waiting for the police. But neither of you have to come.”

She’s ready to walk into god knows what with nothing but her softball bat. Even if his mother wasn’t there, Clarke’s out of her mind if she thinks he’s letting her do this alone.

“We’re with you,” Wells says and nods at Bellamy, as if in understanding that they were thinking the same thing. Clarke exhales.

“Then let’s go.”

Together, they make their way through the house. It’s eerily quiet. They don’t encounter a single person, and it makes Bellamy think that they’ve been _taken_ somewhere.

And then they hear voices from the main kitchen. They creep closer.

Crying. Begging.

The house staff. Bellamy recognizes some of their voices. He strains to hear his mother’s. Nothing.

“Shut up,” barks an unfamiliar voice. “All of you, shut up for a minute.”

Another voice curses. “This is all going to hell, Shumway. He wasn’t supposed to die. She’s not even here.”

The three of them look at each other. Someone’s _dead_ in there?

“But someone’s gonna tell us _where_ she is,” says Shumway. “Isn’t that right?” The sound of fist hitting flesh, and a thud. Renewed begging and crying. “I didn’t come all this way and spend all those years to _not_ get the chance to look Abby Griffin in the eyes when I kill her.”

Clarke presses her hand against her mouth, closing her eyes. None of this makes sense. It’s bizarre.

Bellamy hardly even feels himself moving, but he does. He’s only taken two steps towards the kitchen before a heavy thud registers in his ears. He turns, and Wells is tipping to the floor. Clarke squeaks. Someone—a third attacker, a blonde woman—has come up behind them, and she’s got a gun.

“Three more, Dax,” she calls, and Clarke and Bellamy hold up their hands helplessly. “Drop your weapons and go into the kitchen. And don’t try anything.”

They go. The scene in front of them is horrifying. Several of the house staff, on their knees, at gunpoint from the other two. Bellamy finds his mother among them, pale, trembling. When she sees Bellamy, she seems to crumple in on herself, mouthing _No_.

Clarke makes a strangled sound beside him, which diverts his attention. There’s a body sprawled on the floor, a slow red rosette blooming from his head.

Bellamy could recognize the back of that head anywhere, just like half the world could. Jake Griffin.

“No,” Clarke mutters wildly, taking three steps. “N—no. No!”

“Take another step and die,” Dax says, but Clarke keeps moving. Bellamy reaches out and grabs her waist.

“Clarke, no,” he says, even though her body is shaking, straining against him.

“Dad, Dad, no, what did you do to him, what did you _do_?” She’s heaving with sobs.

Dax looks at the other man—Shumway. Over Clarke’s crying, he says, “Well, this just complicated things.”

“Think they called the police?”

“Obviously they did,” says the blonde woman. She’s dragged Wells’ limp body into the room, and dumps him unceremoniously near the house staff. “They knew we were here. Look, they even armed themselves.” She nudges the pile of makeshift weapons.

“Fuck.” Shumway scrubs a hand over his face. He’s got a comm in his ear. They all do, like they had really prepared for this. “Okay. New plan.”

He comes up to Clarke. “Tell us where your mommy is. We know she was supposed to be here.”

Clarke spits in his face.

He leans back. “Alright, that’s not very nice.” He grabs her by the hair.

Bellamy lets go of Clarke’s waist, but only so he can lunge past her to punch Shumway in the jaw.

Probably not a smart move since the man’s got a gun in his hand, but he can’t help himself. Shumway’s head whips back. Bellamy pulls his fist back for another punch, but then he’s jerked backwards by the collar. Automatically, he elbows his assailant in the face, and is rewarded by a crunch. The blonde woman drops to the floor, out cold.

Panting, he looks up. Fleetingly he glimpses that Shumway’s got Clarke pinned up against the fridge, gun to her back, talking to her in low tones. He doesn’t have time to do anything about it, though. Dax is raising his gun at him.

Bellamy dives to the floor on instinct just as he shoots. _Bang_. The bullet lodges into the kitchen cabinet. The house staff scream in alarm, covering their heads. Dax lowers his gun to aim at Bellamy again. This time, he doesn’t have anywhere to dodge.

Bellamy’s mother screams his name. She shouldn’t have to see this, Bellamy thinks wildly. If he dies, and his mother watches… she’ll never recover. She won’t be able to look after Octavia.

Wells appears out of nowhere. He crashes into Dax just as he fires again, and the bullet goes wide. The two of them careen into the kitchen island, struggling with each other. Dax is bigger than Wells, but Wells is strong enough to hold his own in close quarters.

“Help Clarke!” Wells shouts at him.

Shumway’s still got a gun to Clarke’s back. Bellamy runs to the blonde woman’s side and grabs her gun, the points at Shumway. “Back away from her _right now_.”

Shumway pauses. When Clarke was on set for her movie role, all three of them had learned to shoot, but that was for fun. Bellamy now wishes he’d asked more questions, that he’d paid better attention.

But Shumway’s hesitation is apparently all Clarke needed. She throws her head back and hits him right in the chin, making him stagger away. For a second it looks like they might have the upper hand. Then, from behind them, Dax:

“Both of you get on your knees _right now_.”

They all turn. It looks like Wells has lost his fight; he’s slumped on the floor, and Dax has his gun trained to his head, bloodied and murderous.

“Don’t do it,” Wells mutters, apparently still half awake. But Bellamy and Clarke do, instantly. Dax looks at the gun in Bellamy’s hand.

“Drop the weapon.”

Bellamy does. He drops it, and then kicks it over to Clarke.

Shumway lunges, but Clarke’s too quick. She snatches it up and then she’s standing with a gun trained on Shumway. A cold glint in her eye, breathing hard, bleeding from a cut on her forehead.

Shumway scoffs. “You don’t even know how to use that thing.”

He walks boldly over to Bellamy and points his gun at him as if to prove his point.

Clarke’s eyes go a little feral. She swings the gun between Dax and Shumway; between Bellamy, or Wells. Bellamy’s unsure she even knows she’s doing it. She settles her aim on Shumway when he presses the gun to Bellamy’s temple.

“You touch him, you die,” she says. Bellamy hardly recognizes her voice, it’s so steely.

Shumway scoffs. “You don’t even know how to use that thing.”

“Try me.”

Even Dax seems mesmerized by the scene before him. “You don’t have the guts,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “You can’t do it.”

But he doesn’t seem certain. There’s a standstill where no one does anything.

“You don’t know what I’d do for him.” Clarke’s hands are impossibly steady, although her hair is sticking to her forehead from sweat. Her blue eyes are laser focused on Shumway like Bellamy’s never seen before. And he absolutely, completely believes her.

Shumway seems to, as well. His smirk has faded somewhat, and slowly, he looks down at Bellamy. He takes Bellamy’s wrist, and angles it up, towards the light.

“You’re not even soulmates,” he says. He sounds puzzled.

Bellamy notices something odd then. Shumway doesn’t have a soulmark. Not on either wrist. His gaze swings towards Dax, and finds the exact same curious thing.

Before he can sort that out, Wells moves.

And moves _fast_. He must’ve been waiting for the opportune moment, when Dax was distracted with Clarke. He head-butts him, and scrambles away. It all happens so quick.

Shumway still has a grip on Bellamy’s wrist, and Bellamy yanks him down with him, throwing him off balance. He doesn’t see what happens next, but he hears a gunshot. And then a groan. _Wells_.

“No!” Clarke screams, eyes wild, and she fires.

Bellamy looks up in time to see Dax’s head jerk back. The cupboards behind him are sprayed with blood. Clarke hardly blinks, so stone cold as her expression is. Then she turns and shoots Shumway, before Bellamy has the chance to do anything.

Shumway falls back with his mouth a shocked “O”. Perhaps Clarke’s so wrapped up she doesn’t notice the blonde woman, now awake, lunging behind her.

Bellamy shouts, “Look out!” But he knows she doesn’t have time. He throws himself forward, tackles Clarke, out of the line of fire.

They fall into a heap in a tangle of limbs. Clarke’s below him, and he doesn’t know what she sees behind them, but she raises her gun again and shoots again, and again, and again, until her clip is empty. Even then he just keeps pulling the trigger.

Bellamy turns to find the blonde woman pitching back, a knife clattering out of her hand, clutching her chest where multiple bullets have been buried.

Then: Silence. Ringing in his ears. Crying in the background from the house staff. He clambers shakily off Clarke. Clarke still has the gun raised, is still pulling the trigger, a sob escaping her. Bellamy takes the gun from her gently, and she lets him. They both turn to Wells.

Instantly, he knows there’s nothing to be done. The other boy is on the floor, pale. His shirt is soaked with blood. There’s so much blood.

Clarke slips in the pool of it a bit as she goes to sink to her knees next to him. “Wells, you’re going to be okay. Just breathe, alright?” Her voice is remarkably calm for the situation. “Listen, do you hear that? The ambulance is coming. Just hold on.”

Bellamy can hear the sirens too. It’s too far in the distance, though. Wells lets out a rattling breath.

His voice is a gasp. “Clarke…”

“Shh. You’re going to be okay,” Clarke says, her voice trembling. Bellamy watches as she presses her hands to the gushing wound in his stomach, her hands becoming instantly soaked with blood.

It’s not enough, even Bellamy can see that. He pulls an apron off the rack to give to her, to press down on the wound. They both press down on it. It does almost nothing.

Wells is becoming paler by the second. Clarke shudders with another sob.

“I’m sorry, Wells. Please forgive me.”

Wells speaks, slowly. “I… I don’t…”

Bellamy knows what Wells would say next, if he could. _I don’t blame you_. But he stops there, and his chest stops rising. His eyes become glassy, and from Clarke’s expression, you’d think he simply said _I don’t._

 _I don’t forgive you_.

Clarke feels for a pulse. For a breath Bellamy watches her, hoping against hope.

But Clarke’s face crumples, and her head sinks onto Wells’ chest as she begins to cry in earnest.

Bellamy’s strength saps out of him. He falls on his hands and knees, and crawls towards his mother and the other house staff. Aurora holds her arms up to him like a child, and he hugs her, kisses her hair, because she’s alive, alive, _alive_ , and he could cry. And he does cry, because he hears Clarke keening behind him as she attempts CPR on a bled-out body, and it’s like she’s finally caught up with him in knowing that life will never be the same.

—

The paramedics get there too late, of course.

Bellamy and Clarke are taken to the police station. Apparently, as Clarke tells him mechanically before they get put in separate vehicles, her mother had a surprise meeting today, the only reason she wasn’t at home.

At the police station, he’s lead into an interrogation room for questioning. It goes on for hours. When asked for the third time if he thought Clarke was in a reasonable amount of danger when she shot the blonde assailant, Diana Sydney, he loses his temper.

He slams his handcuffed hands down on the metal table. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we kill _your_ soulmate, and your father, right in front of you and see if you feel like you’re in a reasonable amount of danger?”

“Revenge killing is not legally justifiable, Mr. Blake. Could Miss Griffin not have used some other means to deter the attacker?”

“No, you’re right,” Bellamy replies in patronizing tones. “She should’ve said please. Don’t know why we didn’t think of that.”

His interrogator sighs.

—

Clarke is much more diplomatic than she imagines Bellamy would be during his questioning.

“Was this murder in self defense?” asks Clarke’s interrogator, referring to Shumway.

“Yes.” Clarke struggles to keep her voice even. Ever since being torn away from Wells’ and her father’s body, she has been trying to hold herself together, and her body is shaking from the effort. “Isn’t there a stand your ground law? _They_ came into _my_ home. I can’t be convicted for these murders.”

He waves that away. “We’ll see about that. I’m just wondering why you killed Shumway so readily. He wasn’t attacking anyone at that point. You had the gun. You had the upper hand.”

Clarke fights down the frustration rising in her. “I didn’t have the upper hand. He was about to kill Bellamy.”

“Bellamy,” the interrogator repeats. “What’s your relationship with Mr. Blake, anyway?”

The interrogator’s eyes are piercing. Clearly he’s the bad cop in this situation. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just answer the question. The details are all muddled. We need to hear this.”

“He’s my friend,” Clarke says.

“A very good friend, would you agree? You spend a lot of time together, from what we know.”

Clarke wonders where they’re going with this. “Yes.”

“And Mr. Jaha was your soulmate.”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever feel that Mr. Blake was jealous of that relationship?”

Clarke gawks. This line of questioning isn’t about Shumway’s death at all. It’s about _Wells_. Are they suggesting that… “Let’s be clear,” she says, her voice razor sharp, “Bellamy and I have a very different relationship than I did with Wells. And don’t you dare,” she takes a breath, knowing she’s losing her careful composure but not caring, “don’t you _dare_ suggest he had a hand in his death because he didn’t.”

“Then did _you_?”

Clarke blinks. The lights are too bright and she feels warm and she hasn’t eaten in hours. She feels like she’s about to faint.

“Who would you say you loved more,” the interrogator challenges. “Mr. Jaha, or Mr. Blake?”

Clarke’s hands make fists. _I love them both_ , she wants to scream. _Why can’t anyone understand that_?

Luckily, another officer comes in at that point to take over, and she’s told she doesn’t have to answer that. They move on to other questions. But she’s shaky after that.

—

The two of them are let go, eventually, when Abby Griffin storms into the police station and demands it.

“Don’t worry,” she tells Clarke on the way to the car. “They just wanted to scare you. You’re not going to be on trial. The stand your ground laws clearly protect you from prosecution. There’ll be a statement put out, but our lawyers will take care of everything.”

She pats Clarke’s back. Clarke marvels at her composure, even after her soulmate’s death.

But then again, Abby has nothing to blame herself for.

—

Clarke spends the next few days lying in bed with the blinds drawn. Bellamy comes to see her at some point. It’s difficult to talk to him. She lets him hold her listless hand and feels like a monster.

It’s not the fact that she’s a murderer that really scares her. She had to do it. No, it’s a constant loop of _ifs_ in her mind that really keeps her up at night. If she had been faster, stronger… if she had done something more… if she had shot Dax before he had the chance to do anything. There are so many ways it could’ve happened, and Wells didn’t have to die in any of them.

 _Maybe if you hadn’t been so focused on Bellamy_ , a voice in her head whispers. She tries to shut it down. But it’s there now, worming its way into her conscious mind. _Maybe if you’d been loyal to your soulmate and only your soulmate, like you’re supposed to be_. _Maybe Wells died because of_ you _._

Eventually Bellamy gives up trying to get her to talk, and their silence, for the first time since they became friends, turns sour. He leaves, and after that, she refuses to talk to anyone. Not even Bellamy.

—

Jake Griffin’s funeral is a huge one, on a rainy day with plenty of media coverage. Clarke can feel herself being scrutinized at all angles.

Wells’ is the next day. And it’s a sunny, cloudless day, which suits him, and Clarke is glad for it. Clarke is also glad there’s less media coverage than her father’s. Wells preferred to stay out of the spotlight. But with less spotlight comes less people, too, and that makes her angry. A beautiful soul like Wells deserves more people to grieve over his loss. The whole world should be here.

She’s angry about a lot of things.

The day before, her mother had said, “I’m hiring a bodyguard for you.”

Clarke opened her mouth to protest, but her mother kept going. “This is not negotiable. No more sneaking out with Bellamy either. Yes, I knew about that. But I can’t do my job and worry about you being killed by stalkers at the same time.”

Clarke had raised her eyebrows. “It wasn’t stalkers. It was people coming after _you_. And we still don’t know what it was about!”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“How could you say that?” Abby didn’t say anything, and it made Clarke even more mad. “Dad died and you say it doesn’t _matter_?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s what it sounds like,” Clarke spat. “There’s more to this than meets the eye, Mom, I know it. Bellamy told me that night that those people didn’t have soulmarks. How is that possible?”

“He was probably seeing things,” Abby said gently. “It’s not surprising, given what you’ve been through.”

“But—”

“Let it go, Clarke.”

She couldn’t. “They were here for you. Do they have a grudge against you? Against Arkadia?”

Her mom was so quiet Clarke thought she might have struck a nerve. Then: “It doesn’t matter. We have to think about the future of the company. You can’t talk publicly about your wild theories, alright? Our stock prices will fall—”

Clarke walked away disgusted, and hasn’t spoken with her mother since.

Wells’ funeral service ends, and people mill around the funeral parking lot before going home. She sees Bellamy, his face still bruised like hers from that night, across the lot. She hadn’t spoken to him during the ceremony. She’d only looked at him once, while she was struggling to get through her speech about Wells. It was just him and his sister. His mother, Clarke suspects, has turned to a bottle for comfort.

When she had caught his eye, he had stared stonily back at her. Neither of them cry. Not anymore.

She spots Wells’ father approaching her across the lot.

“Clarke,” Jaha greets. “If there’s anything I can do for you, please let me know.”

Clarke forces herself to look him in the eyes, to see the echo of Wells’ in his. “Thank you.”

Jaha looks into the distance. “I lost my son,” he says, “and you lost your soulmate. I know that feeling myself. My wife died over ten years ago. You’re never the same,” Jaha says gently, and Clarke swallows. “And that’s normal. But life goes on. We will, too. I promise you that.”

Neither of them state the obvious; that Jaha never married anyone again after that.

In the coming days, there are a lot of similar condolences. Her room becomes filled with flowers, her house becomes filled with people who come to comfort her and her mother, to bring their apologies and offerings of support. There is a lot of love and sympathy for what the Griffins have been through, since both of them lost their soulmates. Especially for Clarke, though.

 _She was going to marry that boy someday,_ tuts somebody. _It’s a heartbreaking thing, to lose your soulmate so early. No one else you marry could ever compare_.

Clarke’s not sure what about that’s supposed to be comforting.

—

The other witnesses at the scene testify to what happened. Her mother must’ve paid off the entire staff handsomely, because the actual reasons behind the attack are never outed. It’s assumed overzealous stalkers killed Jake Griffin and Wells Jaha.

The media, of course, still has a field day with the entire thing. The entire story is just too juicy. _Clarke Griffin killed three people and the housekeeper’s son helped her do it_!

It doesn’t matter that she’s not being charged. The whole world sees her as a murderer. People speculate whether she _really_ needed to kill these people. They go as far as to wonder whether she liked it. The tabloid coverage is uglier than ever.

Clarke withdraws into herself, and doesn’t talk to or hear from Bellamy in a long while. His mother’s on leave, too. Then one day she sees a tabloid photo of him—they’ve been bothering him more, asking for details about Clarke—and he’s got his hand in a split. She wants to reach through it and adjust the hastily done straps.

She calls Bellamy to ask what happened. He doesn’t pick up. Confused, she calls Octavia instead.

“Oh, that?” Octavia says, shortly. “He got into a fight at school. Defending _you_.”

It sounds accusatory. “I didn’t ask for that.”

“Right.” Octavia proceeds to tell her the rest of the stuff Bellamy’s been up to in the last few months. While Clarke has become a ghost, Bellamy has grown angry, frustrated. He’s gotten himself suspended at school, gets into fights, and breaks things, including his own hand. A boxer’s fracture.

She needs to talk to him. She can’t sit here while he self-destructs. She texts him, to ask him if he’ll come to her father’s last movie premiere with her like they had planned before this all happened.

He sends back a curt _Fine_. Clarke sort of feels bad guilting him into it, but she has a suspicion he would refuse to meet otherwise.

—

The night of the movie premiere, Clarke and Bellamy take one limo, while her mother follows behind in another. Bellamy hasn’t spoken a word since he got in here. He’s just here to fulfill his duty, Clarke knows that.

She looks at him, although he studiously looks out the window. There’s a bruise high on his cheekbone that looks fresh. He’s gotten into a fight again. And she knows, she _knows_ it’s because he’s hurting, but she doesn’t know what to do about that. Not when he won’t let her near him.

She watches him rub at the cast around his wrist, and asks softly, “Why’d you do that to yourself?”

He scoffs, crossing his arms and keeping his gaze trained outside the window. “Oh, _now_ you want to talk?”

She studies his profile. The tension in his jawline, his crossed arms, the fact that he’s seated as far away from her as possible. She wants to understand. “You… wanted to talk?”

He laughs, bitterly, and shakes his head. “Never mind. Only _you’re_ allowed to give a shit about what happened, I get that.”

And she gets it then. She pushed him away for weeks, isolating him just as much as she isolated herself. Clarke has received all the sympathy _and_ all the blame. Bellamy hasn’t. Even though he was there, even though he almost died, even though his mother’s suffering from PTSD too much to work—even though he cared about Wells, too.

“Bellamy.” She pauses, unsure of how to put it. _You’re allowed to be sad. You’re allowed to be angry. I should’ve been there for you to talk to_. In the end, it’s simple. “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t move, but the line of his shoulders softens just a bit.

“You don’t have to forgive me,” she continues, and means it. He could never talk to her again and she would understand.

A tear falls into her lap. She dabs at her eyes, trying not to ruin her makeup—it wouldn’t look good to show up to a red carpet looking a mess and the tabloids would jump all over it—but _god_ , she cannot believe she did this in her grief. That she left her friend alone at the time when he most needed her. She shudders with a sob, tries to be quiet as she can with her crying. For a minute, her hitched, uneven breaths are the only sound in the limo. Then he speaks quietly.

“It should’ve been me.”

She’s not sure she heard him right. “What?”

His jaw works. “I should’ve—I should’ve done something, made Dax kill me instead. Not Wells—”

“ _Bellamy_ ,” she says, aghast. Through all her guilt, she never imagined he felt it too. “How could you say that?”

He looks at her then, his eyes wide and anguished and shiny. “Because then you’d still have Wells. You wouldn’t be here crying.”

Clarke gapes at him. She cannot believe he is that dense. “Yes, I _would_ ,” she tells him. “You’re just as important to me as Wells.”

“No, I’m not,” he says with a bitter smile. “I’m not your soulmate.”

And there it is. They’ve never spoken this comparison out loud before. But now it’s there, lingering between them. The thing is, perhaps he’s right. Perhaps Clarke _should_ care about him less than she does. But she can’t. She won’t. So she squares her shoulders.

“Do you think _I’m_ less important than your soulmate?” she asks him instead. He blinks.

“You know I haven’t met my soulmate—”

“Do you think that I would be less important?” she demands. And kind of, sort of, she wants to know his answer.

He glares at her before grinding out, “No.”

“There you go,” she says, pleased she’s not the only screwed up one here. “So stop making stupid comparisons, Bellamy.”

His glare doesn’t lessen, but the relaxed lines of his body tell her the situation between them has mostly been defused.

Clarke touches her cheeks; still wet. “My makeup isn’t too bad, is it?”

“You look like a raccoon,” he replies, still glaring. She almost smiles. When he’s direct, that’s a good sign. She pulls out her phone to look at her reflection and starts wiping beneath her eyes. He watches her a moment, then:

“Here,” he says gruffly, producing a crinkled package of tissues from his pocket. Half empty, she notes as he pulls one out, and then she doesn’t note anything else because he gently takes her chin and pulls her face towards his.

They’re quiet. His expression is soft again as he carefully wipes the dripping mascara off her face, brows furrowed together in concentration, like he wants to make sure she looks her very best today. Meanwhile, he looks like he barely tried. His curls are all over the place, his shirt hastily buttoned. His eyes red-rimmed, as though he gets as little sleep as her.

A fondness overtakes her. A yearning, for something she doesn’t know. She cups his face in her hands, and he stills.

“What?” he says quietly, deep brown eyes burning solemnly into hers.

“Your hair is messy,” she informs him, and that pulls a smile out of him, a little one.

“Well, are you going to fix it?”

“No. I like it.”

The limo pulls up to the red carpet. Flashes of cameras catch her eye from behind the tinted windows. This is it.

“Do I still look like a racoon?” she asks him, and he shakes his head, and she doesn’t even check her reflection, because she trusts him.

Before they get out, he grabs her hand. “Together?” he says, quietly, and it feels like both a question, and a vow.

She squeezes his hand back and nods.

—

Clarke and her mother pose for the cameras on the red carpet. Then Clarke sticks close to Bellamy when reporters yell questions about the night of her father’s death and tries to imagine they’re not here. She holds it together.

At least until she’s in the darkened theatre, sitting between her mom and Bellamy, and it gets to her scene. She watches herself shoot a robber in the face, saving the life of her father’s character, and that’s when she breaks down.

—

Clarke’s nightmares still follow her, different every time she falls asleep. She sees their faces—everyone involved in that night. Sometimes in those dreams she kills Shumway faster. Sometimes she kills Wells.

She knows Bellamy has them too. Only because he calls her frantically once in the middle of the night to ask if she’s okay. He seems to calm down once he hears her voice. They don’t talk about the nightmares, really, but it’s sort of nice to know she’s not the only one.

Abby Griffin sells the mansion. They move into a new home in a new neighbourhood, and while it’s great that Clarke no longer lives at a murder scene, it also makes her feel desperately lonely. Meals with her mother aren’t quite the same without her father’s easy smiles and joking nature bringing them together. Clarke catches Abby looking down at her wrist sadly on more than one occasion.

Later, Clarke picks up a tabloid out of morbid curiosity and reads their dramaticized retelling of the great love story between her and Wells. Misinterpreting innocent hand gestures in public, or when Clarke leaned in to whisper in his ear as something more intimate. She can’t stomach it. She spots the chess set gathering dust in the corner of her bedroom, and she picks it up and moves it to a different room. She can’t look at it without seeing Wells’ warm smile. She can’t look at it without feeling guilty.

But, life does go on.

—

It’s halfway through Bellamy’s senior year that Clarke asks him where he’s thinking of applying for college.

He gives her a look. “I’m not going to college.”

Her jaw drops. “What? You always talked about it when we were little!”

“I grew up,” he huffs. He looks away, but Clarke knows better. She can tell from the jaw clench, the brooding look in his eyes.

He still wants to. He just can’t afford to.

Octavia’s still in school, rent is still due. It probably doesn’t help that his mother was so traumatized by what had happened in the Griffin mansion she has been unable to work for months. Clarke understands. Everyone’s dealt with it in different ways.

She’s unsure Bellamy dealt with it at all.

She opens her mouth, about to speak. But he holds up a hand.

“Don’t,” he says, sounding angry. “I know what you’re going to say. And I don’t want your money, Clarke.”

“Nothing excessive,” Clarke wheedles. They’ve played this game before. Clarke always loses. “Just to cover tuition and travel and room and board.”

“No.”

“Just tuition.”

“No.”

“Just textbooks.”

“No.”

“A loan! Like a bank—”

“You’re not a bank,” Bellamy says tightly, arms crossed over his chest. “And I’m not a charity case. So drop it.”

She chews her lip. She can tell he’s getting annoyed, but she’ll have to pick this up later, because her mother has just walked into the front foyer.

Abby clearly notices the two of them have their jackets on. “Going somewhere?”

Clarke shrugs. “We’re just going for a drive. We’ll stay in the Rover the whole time.” She puts emphasis on that last part. Her mother has started paying hawklike attention to Clarke’s activities, and while Clarke can certainly understand why, it’s absolutely driving her up the wall.

“I’m sure you will,” Abby says. “Luckily, I’ve finally found you a bodyguard.”

Before Clarke can react, someone steps through the door behind her. Clarke and Bellamy automatically shift closer together when they see him.

He’s tall, and just generally gigantic, and Clarke honestly thinks he could crush her ribs to dust with those tree-like arms. His jacket has a logo on it; ELIGIUS SECURITY. It’s the company Arkadia uses for corporate security too.

This guy’s overall demeanor screams _you are not giving me the slip_ , and Clarke is sure that’s the exact reason her mother hired him.

“This is Roan,” Abby says.

“Now wait a second,” Bellamy says, but Clarke speaks at the same time.

“I don’t need a bodyguard.”

“Yes, you do. And we are not having this discussion. I’ve got one, you need one. It would give me peace of mind, at the very least. Eligius is the best in the business when it comes to executive security,” Abby adds. “I had Kane vet him. Roan here is good.”

Kane is on Arkadia’s board of directors and a family friend. Clarke’s met him several times, and he’s a nice enough guy, but still, she narrows her eyes.

If Roan has any thoughts on the way he’s being rejected right now, he doesn’t say any of them. He just stares at her, expressionlessly. Clarke realizes her mother really isn’t budging on this. She and Bellamy share a look of dismay. Irritably, she shoves her feet into her shoes.

“Let’s go, then.”

Roan doesn’t talk much as they walk out to the Rover. Neither do Bellamy and Clarke; Bellamy simply tosses Clarke the keys and arches a brow. She nods; he’s been teaching her to drive stick, so might as well get in some practice.

Clarke pulls out of the driveway and through the gates. There’s complete silence. Clarke doesn’t much feel like driving around with a stranger in the back who’s listening to everything she and Bellamy say. More than anything, he’s a reminder that her life has changed enough to need a bodyguard.

She wants to go back to how things used to be.

She doesn’t realize her eyes are filled with tears until about ten minutes into the drive, when Bellamy says, quietly, “Clarke, pull over.”

She’s hunched over the steering wheel, barely seeing the road through blurry vision, shoulders tense with the effort of not crying. She won’t, not with Roan here.

She obliges, pulling over to the side of the road. Bellamy rubs the back of her neck. His fingers are gentle, warm. “Clarke,” he says, soft as butter, and she almost breaks down right then and there.

“You drive,” she manages, and practically falls out of the vehicle.

They switch places. Bellamy says conversationally, “Why don’t we go to the arcade?”

It’s an odd sort of request. They hadn’t talked about doing that, but Clarke shrugs. She doesn’t much care where they go right now. Her mood’s already ruined.

—

Inside the arcade, Clarke pushes her sunglasses up higher. Bellamy touches Clarke’s hand.

“Alright, do your thing,” he says.

“What?”

He smiles at her. “Go to the washroom. Don’t you always have to go as soon as we get here? Might as well get it over with before we’re in the middle of a game like last time.”

What? That has actually never happened before. But she reads something in his smile, in the intensity of his eyes right now. And she trusts him. Extremely aware of Roan watching them, she plays along. “Fine,” she drawls, and, hands stuck in her jean back pockets, she pivots on the heel and heads in the direction of the bathroom. Roan follows. Surely, he won’t follow her inside, will he?

“I’ll be right here,” Roan says, leaning against the wall outside the washroom. “Shout if you need anything.”

Unlikely. But Clarke shrugs offhandedly and pushes through the door.

The bathroom is nearly empty. Just a few stalls are in use. But Clarke’s more interested in the window up on the wall, right above the sinks.

She washes her hands and dries them and fluffs her hair in the mirror about eight times before she’s finally alone. Then she walks to the window. She has to stand on her tiptoes to get the latch open.

She puts her hands on the ledge. But it’s just too high up for her to get any leverage. Luckily, at that very moment, Bellamy’s hands appear through the window, grabbing her wrists and pulling her through like she weighs nothing.

She crawls onto the grass beside him and snickers. “It’s a little weird that you were just standing beside the womens’ washroom window.”

“I didn’t look through,” he says, sounding affronted as they set off for the parking lot, and the Rover.

“I know you didn’t.” She bumps his shoulder, suddenly excited at the prospect of an evening alone. “Where should we go?”

“I’ve got an idea.” As they clamber into the Rover, Bellamy glances behind them and curses. “Clarke, get in, quick.”

Clarke follows his gaze and sees Roan sprinting across the lot towards them. She dives into the passenger seat and slams the door. “Go, go, go!”

Bellamy doesn’t have to be told twice. The Rover’s tires squeal as they exit the parking lot.

Clarke checks the rearview. “That was close. How did he catch on so quickly?”

“Because he’s good,” Bellamy replies darkly. Then sneaks a grin at her. “But we’re better.”

—

When Bellamy finally pulls the Rover to the side of the road, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and the sky has darkened completely. On either side of the road is a field of long grass. A big sign advertises the acreage for sale. Clarke gives Bellamy a puzzled look; they’ve never been here before. He seems a little nervous, continually tugging on the collar of his jacket.

“Wow,” Clarke says teasingly as they wade through the gently swaying grasses. “This is very exciting.”

Bellamy gives her a look but doesn’t explain. After they ‘ve walked a minute through the field, he lies down on the ground and pats the space beside him. She obliges as he pulls out his new phone. It’s a crappy, cheap one, but it does the job. Clarke stares at the stars while Bellamy types something in his phone. Then, he aims his phone up at the sky. Clarke closes her eyes and lets him do his thing, trusting that he’ll explain when he’s ready. In the meantime, she turns on her side in the tall grass and rests her head on his shoulder, throwing a leg over both of his. She drops a kiss on his jaw while she’s there, and he leans into it.

She almost falls asleep before he speaks again. “Look at this.”

She opens her eyes and looks at his phone. There’s some app she doesn’t recognize open, using his camera to capture the clear night sky above them. Bellamy points to one of the stars captured on the screen. “This is it,” he says.

Clarke squints at it, then at the actual thing up in the sky. It’s a very ordinary star, not one she could’ve picked out of a thousand others. “This is what?”

“This star,” he says, “is named Wells Jaha.”

She lifts her head off his shoulder to stare at him. Bellamy sighs and tugs something out of his pocket. A neatly folded piece of paper. He passes it to her. “This is a photocopy. I have the original certificate in my room, I’ll give it to you.”

She focuses on what he’s handed her. A certificate from some star registry, declaring this star at this certain coordinates to be named Wells Jaha. “You named a star after him?” she asks softly.

Bellamy hesitates. “It’s not completely legitimate,” he mutters. “Actual astronomers don’t really recognize these, but it’s really in an international registry now. I just thought, this way, you’d always be able to see him when you look up at the sky—”

Clarke flings her arms around him.

“Thank you,” she says, and feels his body, all the hard lines of it, sort of soften, as he hugs her back. He did this for her, and he got rid of Roan for her so she could feel normal for a second, and she loves him so, so very much.

She feels his lips press into her hair. Something occurs to her.

“How much did this cost?”

“Not much,” he says, and she frowns, because she knows it cost something, and that _not much_ to her is a significant sum to Bellamy. It means he sacrificed something to give her this. Not rent, or food, or Octavia’s karate lessons; no, he would’ve sacrificed something of _his_. Maybe he held back on fixing the broken taillight of the Rover, or getting a new jacket, or skimping on food five days in a row, or any number of things Clarke would’ve preferred him to do with his limited money.

She sits up. “So you’re allowed to spend money on me, but I’m not allowed to do the same for you?”

He sits up as well, expression darkening. “That’s not the same and you know it.”

“No, I don’t! Tell me how it’s not the same!”

He opens his mouth to answer, but then his eyes shift behind her, and his expression darkens further. “We’ve got a problem.”

Clarke turns her head and sees Roan walking towards them. Her jaw drops. Beside the Rover, a sleek Eligius-issued black SUV is parked.

“Looks like he’s gonna snap our necks,” Bellamy comments lightly, and it’s like the almost-argument from two seconds ago never happened.

“Do you think he could?” Clarke looks at Roan’s massive hands and answers her own question. “Oh, my god. He could. Like a twig.” They both sort of snicker, at least until Roan’s close enough to speak.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he says in a tone that makes it clear he’s not sorry at all. “But it’s time to go home.”

Clarke crosses her arms. “What if I don’t want to?”

“Then I’ll throw you over my shoulder and _take_ you home, princess,” Roan says without blinking. “So make your choice. And make it fast. Your mother isn’t very pleased.”

“I wouldn’t be either if the bodyguard I hired screwed up on day one,” Bellamy remarks from behind her. Roan levels him with a flat look.

“I’ll admit I’m impressed,” he says after a moment. “No one’s ever given me the slip. Who’s idea was it?”

“Mine,” Clarke says immediately. No way is she letting Bellamy take the blame as troublemaker.

Roan nods and looks at Bellamy. “Yours, then. Creative, I’ll give you that. If you’re ever interested in a career as a security officer, talk to me.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Bellamy replies.

Roan, unbothered, turns back to Clarke. “What’s it gonna be, Clarke?”

Clarke glares at him, then raises her chin haughtily. “We can’t leave the Rover behind.”

“Cute of you to think I’m taking your boyfriend with us,” Roan says. “I don’t care about him, he can take his jeep. It’s just me and you in my vehicle.”

“Go, Clarke,” Bellamy says, with a touch to her back. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Clarke sighs and does.

—

In the drive back to the Griffin estate, Clarke phones her mother and gets the lecture over with, on speakerphone, while touching random buttons in Roan’s car just for the pleasure of hearing him say, “Don’t touch that.”

At the end of reaming her out, Abby says, “We’ll talk about it more when you get home. And Clarke, don’t do this again. This is for your own safety. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you too.”

Clarke softens somewhat. “Okay.”

She ends the call and turns to Roan. Roan keeps his eyes on the road. She looks at his wrist. His soulmark is some weird, jagged looking long triangle. “What is that, a carrot?”

“An icicle,” Roan says sourly. “Are you going to try to escape me tomorrow?”

“No. Now listen up.”

Roan’s eyes narrow at Clarke’s commanding tone. She doesn’t care. Something had rubbed her wrong about his comment about not caring about Bellamy.

“I don’t care what my mother says,” she tells him. “If Bellamy is with me, you protect him too.”

“I’m paid to protect you, not your boyfriend.”

Again, Clarke doesn’t bother to refute the assumption. “But if something happens to him on your watch,” she says, making sure her next words are crystal clear, “When I turn eighteen, not only will I fire you, but I will make sure you never get another job. Got it?”

Roan finally looks at her then. Clarke’s gaze is unwavering. Then, at last, he nods slowly.

—

Bellamy graduates high school. Clarke insists on going to it.

When they call his name to cross the stage, Clarke claps harder and longer than anyone else. She tells Roan to clap and he does too. Bellamy’s looking especially handsome today; maybe it’s the smile on his face, a little relieved, making him look very young. He never outright said it to Clarke, but she knows he was afraid he wouldn’t graduate. Having to work two jobs to keep his family afloat can do that to a person.

So although he looks much more like himself in his rugged, beat-up jacket, Clarke’s happy to see him in this outfit for one day. And she’s not the only one.

“Do you think if I colour over my soulmark with a crown, he’ll give me the time of day again?” whispers a girl sitting in the row in front of her, and her friend snickers. Clarke crosses her arms.

Octavia beside Clarke has clearly heard the comment too. She makes a face and leans in to Clarke and whispers how that girl was at a party a few months back, that both Octavia and Bellamy had been at. She’d just been broken up with in a very humiliating, public way, crawled into Bellamy’s lap and he did not dissuade her.

“And he made out with her for like, ten straight minutes on the couch,” Octavia had complained with an eyeroll. “He’ll never say no to a hookup.”

Clarke smiles a little although she can already tell Octavia’s got it wrong. That girl was looking for a way to regain control, to be respected. What better way than to make out with Bellamy Blake, who—well, Clarke’s not blind.

And she knows he’s not truly a player, no matter how much he pretends to be. It’s that he never says no to someone who he thinks he could make feel better. And she does love that about him, even if it makes her worry for him too.

—

Bellamy goes with Clarke to her first day in the Arkadia headquarters office.

Obviously, it’s not her actual first time in the building; she had been there many times with Wells, as she explains. But today Abby wants her to sit in on some meetings with her. Abby’s trying to groom her for leadership one day, that much is obvious. Clarke doesn’t seem to mind, or at least she doesn’t show it if she does.

The two of them sit in on a board meeting. Listening to a bunch of men squabble for two hours over a tiny branding decision is about as exciting as watching grass grow, but then they get to tour the lab, where a woman called Dr. Singh shows them around their stem cell research.

“We’re doing a lot of work in trying to understand cell fate determination,” she explains to Clarke and Bellamy.

Clarke nods sagely, but Bellamy doesn’t. “What the hell’s that?” he has to ask.

“Stem cells can become any kind of cell initially, but there’s a sort of stepwise cascade that occurs to put them down one road or another, and after that they can’t go back. Their fate has been determined, so to speak. We’re interested in how to reverse that process.”

Afterwards, as they’re being walked out, Clarke hooks her arm through his playfully and whispers in his ear. “Thanks for asking, I was wondering that too.”

“Is that right,” he replies, pretending to be annoyed although he’s more amused than anything. “You had me thinking I was the only stupid one in the room for a second there.”

She pinches him in retaliation, still pressed up against his side.

They plan for a trip to the pizza joint across the street since they’re both hungry, but they meet trouble in the form of a paparazzo as soon as they step out the doors.

Clarke sighs. “Oh, no.”

Someone must’ve seen Clarke come in today. She and Bellamy detach from the other’s side and retreat a respectable distance away. Sometimes the tabloids get photos of them touching and get the wrong idea. It’s never a fun headline.

As has become habit in these situations, Bellamy scans the street, looking for the easiest route to escape prying eyes. The shortest way to the pizza place is still a busy intersection.

“Still want pizza?” he murmurs. “We could go back inside, take a car home.”

She squares her shoulders. “No. I’ve been dreaming about that pepperoni for a week. I’m still game if you are.”

He nods because it _is_ damn good pizza, he’s not immune.

With Roan at their side, they walk down the street, earning a few looks but nothing more. Bellamy jabs the walk button at the intersection several times, keeping an eye on the guy who’d sighted them in the first place. And… the camera comes up. A nice one, by the looks of it. _Click click click_. Clarke ducks her head. Roan automatically moves in front of Clarke, so Bellamy relaxes. A part of him is sort of glad Roan’s around. It takes a bit of anxiety off his mind when it comes to protecting her.

Also, on a whim one night while trying to sort bills, he’d checked the Eligius website. The benefits of a job there far outweighed his pride. He’d applied.

The walk light is taking its sweet damn time. While they’re waiting, the photographer manages to come up to them.

Bellamy’s mood sours further when the guy speaks.

“Clarke! Any new romance since Wells died?”

Clarke tugs her cap down nervously, drifting to Roan’s side. The man turns and sees Bellamy. Unfortunately, Bellamy is at this point a bit recognizable whenever he’s with Clarke. And the tabloids have been quite interested in him for the past few years, for whatever reason.

Bellamy tries to move away, but the man snags his sleeve. “Bellamy! You and Clarke were spotted holding hands a week ago. Are you together for now? And if so, what about your own soulmate? What will you do when you meet them?”

The walk light finally turns on. “Get _off_ me,” Bellamy snaps, shoving him, but before he can do anything more, Roan steps between them.

“Alright, it’s time for you to go.”

The paparazzo seems surprised at the hostile tone, but when Roan doesn’t budge, he lets them go and doesn’t follow.

A little put off that he’d helped him, Bellamy looks up at the bodyguard as they cross the street. Roan’s face is inscrutable as he exchanges a rather meaningful look with Clarke. Clarke, however, is smiling as if pleased. Alright then.

He looks down at his sleeve, where there’s now a scuff mark, and attempts in vain to brush off the dirt. It’s a bit of a fool’s errand, seeing how beat up this jacket already is, but he doesn’t like the idea of the paparazzo’s fingers having touched it.

A shutter clicks, and he looks down the street to see the paparazzo taking photos of _him_. The way the camera’s pointed, it doesn’t even look like Clarke would be much in the frame.

“What’s the point of taking photos of me? Who’s gonna pay for that?” he mutters. Clarke grins. “What?”

“You don’t read the gossip magazines at _all_ , do you?”

“No,” he says, bewildered. “What do they say about me?”

Her smile turns cat-like, and her lashes lower just a bit. “Look in a mirror once in a while and you’ll find out.”

It takes him a second, and when he understands, he blushes, and she laughs a little. And because her nose adorably scrunched up, looking _happy_ , he can’t help but smile too.

As they continue down the street, his smile fades a bit as he recalls the paparazzo’s words.

 _What about your own soulmate? What will you do when you meet them_?

Bellamy wishes he had the answer to that.

—

Bellamy’s first day of training at Eligius is… interesting, to say the least.

The instructor, Anya, scowls at them all and proceeds to walk around and announce how Eligius is one of the best private security companies in the world, contracted by governments and major corporations alike to protect their assets.

“Our reputation is about strength. Our training is grueling. Our professionalism standards are very high. Only some of you will be able to meet our requirements, but that’s the point. We only take the best.” She pauses. “You look like a lousy bunch, so I’m not sure how you even passed the screening fitness tests.” She’s looking at a scrawny guy standing next to Bellamy when she says it.

Later, during break, Bellamy just happens to be standing beside the scrawny guy, who says, “That Anya bitch is a piece of work, huh?”

Bellamy half-glances at him, wiping sweat from his forehead. He’s really not interested in gossip when he’s just here to secure a job. He shrugs and takes a swig of water.

“I’m John Murphy, by the way,” the guy says after a moment. “What did you say your name was?”

Bellamy hadn’t said anything at all, of course, but he reluctantly replies. “Bellamy Blake.”

“You look kinda familiar,” Murphy says. “Have I met you before?”

A new, female voice joins the fray. “In a tabloid, I bet. Bellamy Blake, huh?”

Bellamy turns to see a muscular woman with dark hair tied in a ponytail approaching. She arches a brow at his surprise. “I know a lot of celebrities. You’re Clarke Griffin’s best friend, aren’t you?”

Bellamy sighs and puts his water bottle down. He hates being recognized. If those damn paparazzi would mind their own business…

Murphy smacks his hand on the locker behind him. “There we go. I gotta say, you don’t seem the type to be a rich girl’s lapdog.”

Bellamy levels him with a glare. “It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like?” Murphy says, clearly not deterred, his tone dry. “Because no one really knows, do they? Some people think you’re her bodyguard, which, I guess if you’re here on day one with the rest of us, that sort of debunks that theory. Then there’s the theory that you’re just friends. Some people think you actually hate each other but have some kind of business relationship. Some people think you’re fucking, but seeing as you’re not even soulmates, that can’t last long—or, wait, does she _pay you_ —?”

Bellamy sees red, shoving Murphy against the lockers with a resounding crash. “Say another word," he seethes through gritted teeth. "Say another word and just _see_ what happens."

A hand lands on his shoulder. “Hey,” Ponytail Girl says sharply from behind him. “Do you want to be kicked out? Because that’s what this is heading towards. Anya’s coming this way.”

Bellamy narrows his eyes at Murphy, who holds his hands up. “Relax, alright? I was just asking a simple question. No need to get so touchy.”

Bellamy lets go of his shirt, blood still running hot. There’s a reason he doesn’t even look at the tabloids. He can’t stand the lies they print about Clarke. He can’t stand the way people assume things about her. He especially can’t stand the way people assume things about him and Clarke.

Murphy looks at him warily and straightens his shirt. Bellamy starts to regret his impulsivity. He had wanted to blend in here, not make enemies on the first day.

But, unexpectedly, Murphy breaks into a grin.

“I would’ve hit me, too," he says.

—

Bellamy learns that Ponytail Girl’s name is Raven, named after her soulmark. And she’s an engineer at Eligius, getting basic training along with the rest of them.

Murphy’s a high school dropout who’s soulmark is a cockroach, which just seems exactly right to Bellamy. On day two, Raven introduces him to Miller, who waves at him from where he’s got earbuds in and is looking at his phone.

(“His soulmate’s going to school across the country,” Raven explains. “They FaceTime every day to keep in touch.”

“Sounds hard,” Bellamy says. Raven shrugs.

“Not if you’re soulmates, I guess.”)

Most of them are older than him, and more experienced. Bellamy’s at a distinct disadvantage, but he knows the rewards of excelling at Eligius’ training are a better job and better life at the end, so he works himself to the bone, competitive to the max, keeping up with the people who are taller, stronger, quicker than him.

The training is no joke, and most nights Bellamy collapses on his coach for a nap with every muscle screaming at him, only to have to drag himself off again to work his night shift sorting scrap at the junkyard. He would’ve liked to continue his job at the library, but it conflicted with Eligius, and he couldn’t rationalize keeping it.

Clarke comes over for dinner at their cramped apartment sometimes. They don’t spend as much time together lately, with Bellamy’s workload and Clarke in her last year of high school, so they take what they can, which is Clarke sitting at a cramped dinner table chatting with Octavia and working on university applications while Bellamy dozes off on the couch. Yeah, it’s great. If it weren’t for Roan constantly lurking in the corner.

June rolls around, and Clarke graduates, and Bellamy hates having to act like he’s happy for her, when in reality, he knows she’s going to leave now—go somewhere he can’t follow, because his family is here.

It’s confirmed when Clarke quietly tells him one night that she’s moving soon.

The university she’s chosen is six or so hours away by car, so it’s not as bad as it could be, but still. It stings. Even if he tries to pretend it doesn’t.

On their last night together, they lie on Clarke’s new mansion rooftop (not as comfortable as the old house) and Clarke lists all the universities she got into, each more jaw-dropping than the next.

She must see his expression, because she says, “I got in because of my last name and nothing else. They probably didn’t read the rest of my application. I can’t even be proud. Nothing I have is really mine.”

Her voice grows a little sad, there. It’s an angle to her life he’d never considered before. So he tries to lighten the mood. “Damn, Clarke, I’m trying to congratulate you.”

“You’re thinking it too. People would kill to be in my position. I know I don’t have anything to complain about.”

He goes silent because it’s true that plenty of people would kill for that. Hell, even himself—the things he’d do just for the chance to go to school again. But Clarke’s so self-aware that it’s hard to be irritated. In fact, she makes it easier for him to understand. “You don’t have to be grateful all the time,” he says eventually. “When are you leaving tomorrow?”

“Early.”

They grow quiet. Not because there’s nothing to say, but because there’s too _much_ , and to try at all would ruin it.

After a few hours, Clarke whispers, “I have to get to bed.” Bellamy nods, shifting to stand, when she catches his wrist.

“You could always stay,” she says. Her blue eyes are wide, and she’s biting her lip, and her hair is messy, blowing in her face with the breeze, and god, how could he _not_ stay?

They end up curled up under Clarke’s comforter together. It’s the best sleep of Bellamy’s life. At least until he wakes far too early—it’s still dark—to Clarke pressed up against him, and he’s hard.

He tries to shift away.

Her voice comes, soft. “Don’t.”

He freezes. She doesn’t say anything else. Gradually, he puts his arms around her again, and she scooches back into his embrace. He almost groans aloud. She’s so soft, so warm, and smells like something so distinctly Clarke—like wildflowers, like summer nights.

She turns around in his arms, and they stare at each other from their sides of their shared pillow for a long time. Her heel is hooked around his ankle. His arm is still draped over her hip.

He watches Clarke’s long-lashed eyes drop from his, to his mouth, lower, and back up. Her gaze isn’t so much seductive as it is— _intense_. Like she’s trying to burn the image of him into her brain. And he’s doing the same.

Her blonde tresses are spilled over the pillow, and her form is silhouetted by moonlight streaming from the window behind her. The blue of her eyes still seems bright enough to pin him where he lies. Her night shirt is slipping over her shoulder.

He falls asleep again trying to commit her to memory just like this.

—

He wakes an hour or two later because Clarke is trying to crawl out of bed to get ready without disturbing him. And failing.

As she crawls over him he catches her wrist, brushing his thumb against her soulmark. She stops and turns back.

“Clarke,” he says, and nothing more. But as always, she understands.

“I know.” She smiles, a soft, sad smile. “I’ll miss you too.”

—

For security reasons, Clarke’s got her own _house_ on the university campus, and yes, she’s completely aware of how privileged that is. But it’s safer than a dorm, although she’d been reluctant to admit it. Living with so many strangers who would undoubtedly talk to the press about her would be hellish.

As soon as she’s settled, she goes for a walk through campus and calls Bellamy.

“You got moved in okay?” he asks gruffly. There’s the sound of the Rover door closing. “Roan helped?”

“Yeah,” she says softly, clinging to the phone and wishing she could drown in his voice. Wishing she could see his soft brown eyes, his rebellious curls, even the jeep she’s come to associate so closely with him. “Classes start in a few days. What are you up to?”

“Field test tomorrow. Last one before I’m allowed to advance.”

“Good luck to both of us, then,” Clarke says. His life is moving on, and so is hers, and it feels like they’re separating slowly. “I’ll talk to you later.”

She ends the call. Tucks her phone in her pocket slowly. And then starts tearing up as she briskly walks back to her new house.

Roan huffs an amused laugh at her side.

Clarke absently wipes the wetness away from her cheeks. “What?”

“Nothing,” Roan replies, and keeps quiet for the rest of the night.

—

Classes start. Clarke’s there for biomedical sciences. Her mother had suggested a few choices in that regard; premed, business, or pharmacology. Clarke hadn’t known what to choose, so she chose what made the most logical sense if she’s going to take over the company some day.

Roan’s to accompany her to all her classes. She gets to her biology lab class, where students are still milling around, not quite in their seats yet. The TA introduces herself as Luna and tells her to find a partner in the room.

“Welcome to the class,” Luna adds with a warm smile, offering her an assignment. Her lab coat sleeve shifts to reveal her raven soulmark. Clarke nods slowly, accepting the assignment she’s been handed, and side eyes Roan.

“Can’t you just be my partner?” she whispers, even though he’s not enrolled in the class.

Roan looks amused. “Go socialize, princess. I’ll wait outside.”

“No, you can’t,” Clarke protests. “What if someone in here attacks me?”

Roan rolls his eyes. “I’ve run background checks on all of them. You’ll be fine.”

WIth that, he leaves her alone. Clarke squares her shoulders and spots a brunette girl with an infinity sign soulmark sitting alone at a table. Clarke slides into the seat next to her only to be given the stink eye. Great.

Their assignment is to look at seawater under a microscope to familiarize themselves with its operation. “Do you want to split up the questions?” Clarke asks her partner.

“Sure,” the girl says, sourly.

“I’m Clarke,” Clarke adds.

The girl bends to the microscope, ignoring her.

Clarke tries not to be bothered. She focuses on their assignment and there’s ten minutes of silence between them. Clarke’s phone buzzes in her pocket. She ignores it.

However, she gets stuck on the math of magnification, which is one of her designated questions. Her partner is fully absorbed in writing what seems to be an essay on her assignment sheet. Curious, Clarke cranes her neck to see. The girl moves her paper further away.

Clarke sighs and gets up. There’s a line of people to ask Luna a question, so she might as well take a spot. Before she can join, someone waves at her from a table near the front. Two guys. She doesn’t recognize them. But the one with lab goggles perched on his hair is smiling brightly at her, so she comes over.

When she does, the guy elbows his friend. “Dude, that’s Clarke Griffin, all right.”

“Dude. We were right,” says the other, and they both simultaneously raise their hands and high five themselves.

Clarke instinctively looks at their soulmarks. Nope, not the same. But similar; a rake for the goggles one, a shovel for the black-haired one.

“I’m Monty,” says the black-haired one.

“Can we get your autograph?” puts in the other. “Jasper, by the way.”

Clarke considers them. “You can if you help me with this question.”

“Are you kidding?” Monty pulls her paper towards him with a smirk. “Consider it done. And all your other homework, as long as you’re willing to pay a small fee.”

“A _small_ fee?” Jasper stage-whispers. “She’s a millionaire. Charge her like one.”

Clarke grins and signs the napkin Jasper presents. “I’m not planning on buying homework. I just need some help with this one question.”

Monty shows her the math, and after a minute she gets it. “Thank you,” she says. “I was going to ask my partner, but she looked like she’d bite my head off.”

“It’s kind of a funny coincidence you sat next to her,” Monty says. “Don’t you know who that is?”

“No,” Clarke says, slowly. Monty lowers his voice.

“That’s Lexa Woods.” At her stare, he raises his eyebrows. “Come on, your company’s in the same field. You’ve got to know Polaris Biotech.”

That makes her brain churn out a connection. Lexa Woods, young CEO of Polaris Biotech. Clarke dimly remembers reading an article about her a few years back; her cunning as a teenager, her strong leadership in pulling together a family company that was about to crumble and building an empire out of it. Not only that, but a year ago Polaris Biotech made a bid to buy Arkadia. Her mother had turned it down, obviously.

She cranes her neck back to see Lexa looking at her over her worksheet. Quickly, she busies herself again. Interesting.

More interesting is how many people in the classroom aside from Lexa have been looking at Clarke. She hears the word _murderer_. Her mood sours.

Her phone buzzes again. Walking back to her table, she checks it. Her mother.

 _Call me when you can_.

 _Nothing urgent. Just some great news_.

Nothing would get her more curious than that. Somehow, she manages to get through the rest of her class, but as soon as they’re dismissed, she’s out the door.

Roan falls into step with her as she calls her mom. Abby picks up after the third ring.

“Clarke, honey,” her mother says. She sounds excited, which is really rather strange, since she usually keeps her emotions buried. “I hope I didn’t pull you out of anything.”

“No, I just got out of class.” More people pass her in the hall, giving her a side eye as they go. Clarke’s officially the freak on campus, apparently.

Her thoughts are pulled elsewhere when Abby says, “I wanted to tell you sooner—I—I have a new soulmark.”

Clarke slows to a stop in the hallway and stares ahead in shock. _A second soulmark_.

It’s very rare. But it happens. She remembers reading a news story a few years ago of a couple who were in a plane crash; their respective spouses died, and the two of them wound up living in the wilderness together for months. They came out of it with matching soulmarks on their other wrists.

Her mother goes on, excitedly. “It’s been slowly growing for weeks now, and then today, well I saw it. Kane asked me to marry him. And I’m—I said yes.”

“ _Kane_?”

“Why do you sound so surprised? His original soulmate died years ago.” She sighs. “I felt guilty at first. But I know Jake would want this for me.”

“Yeah,” Clarke says, looking down at the chess rook on her own wrist, then at her other wrist, the one that’s smooth with no mark on it at all. “Well, congrats.”

Her mother pauses. “I wanted you to know,” she says, gentle. “That it can happen. Maybe it’ll happen for you too.”

“Maybe,” Clarke echoes. The thing is, she’s terrified of some new mark of fate.

But if it has to come, she can only imagine one.

—

Because Monty and Jasper are apparently the only people in most of her first-year classes who are friendly and don’t think she’s a psychopath, she ends up hanging out with them a few weekends later. She doesn’t even care that they probably just want to be able to brag about a celebrity in their dorm. It’s just nice to spend time with someone who isn’t Roan.

The evening she spends at Monty and Jasper’s is weirdly enjoyable but also bizarre. It turns out they sell weed out of their dorm, and also are homebrew hobbyists.

“Why would anyone buy this when they can just go to the liquor store?”

“Because we’re not actually allowed to make it in the dorm, and the forbidden aspect is what _sells_ this stuff,” Jasper says, sounding aghast at the suggestion. Clarke takes another sip and makes a face. It’s nasty. “Besides, it gets you drunk faster.”

It does do that.

They end up trading stories about their lives. She learns Monty and Jasper grew up together on neighbouring farms. She learns that Monty aims to become an agricultural engineer, and Jasper’s interested in environmental science, but neither of them are fully committed yet. She learns that they’ve not met their soulmates, but they’re both in serious relationships.

“Does that work?” she asks them, quietly, remembering her mother’s warnings about being with someone who’s not her soulmate, that it would be a bad thing to mess with them. She knows there are plenty of non-soulmate couples out there, but it’s sort of understood those relationships just aren’t quite as profound a love, and much harder to maintain. When people meet their soulmates they usually part ways. “Are you… happy?”

Monty and Jasper exchange looks and then back at her. “Yeah,” Monty says, quite seriously.

She absorbs that.

“Yeah, you think we’re just gonna wait around our whole lives for our actual soulmates?” Jasper drawls after a minute. “I’ve heard of people waiting until they’re fifty. Waiting until I’m halfway to my _deathbed_ for someone to come along with a rake on their wrist. God, Monty, can you imagine?”

Monty rolls his eyes and looks back at Clarke. “Hey, look. I know your soulmate died… Sorry about that.” Clarke shrugs as offhandedly as she can. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t live your life.”

Somehow, she ends up telling them about how her mother’s got a new soulmark. It’s been all over the tabloids anyway, so possibly they would’ve heard.

“You might get a second soulmark too, then,” Monty says. “Pretty good chance, actually. They say there’s a genetic component.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Clarke says forlornly. “And if it does, I can’t control who.”

“Why not?” Monty says, pointing his joint at her. “If you knew exactly what the soulmarks are looking for when they select a person, why couldn’t you recreate those exact conditions and self-select the soulmate you wanted?”

“Monty my boy, you might be onto something here,” Jasper says from where he’s sprawled upside down on the couch. He grabs his laptop, ripping the charging cord out of the wall, and props it up on his chest to open Google. Clarke sits back in thought.

“Do you really think that would work?”

“Why not? There’s gotta be a method to the madness of these things.”

Jasper speaks, squinting as he reads off his screen. “Found an article. Thank you Google.” He reads aloud in an overdramatic British accent. “‘While the exact mechanism of soulmarks is unknown, there have been several epidemiological studies attempting to elucidate patterns. What has been found is that the soulmarks tend to match with someone with very different genetic traits, which is hypothesized to avoid the likelihood of recessive genetic illnesses being inherited. Outside of genetic compatibility, there are associations seen in socioeconomic status, personality, and values.’ Okay, I’m bored.” He tosses his laptop aside. Clarke picks it up, trying not to look too obsessed as she memorizes the article title and author.

The conversation switches to new topics after that, but the moment Clarke gets home, she gets her laptop open and does her own literature search on soulmarks. Roan follows her in instead of going into his adjoining part of the house, as he is prone to do when Clarke “gets that look” on her face, whatever that means. They’re at a point in their relationship where Clarke really doesn’t care and neither does he. The hours tick on and on.

“This is getting pathetic,” Roan says at one point, but she ignores him. Her bodyguard ends up falling asleep on the couch next to her.

Her eyes burn. But still she reads on. And at the end of it, it’s four in the morning, but her brain is too wired to sleep. What if she could do it? What if—what if she could engineer a new soulmark, and have it match Bellamy’s? What if all this time he could still be hers?

She’s never allowed herself to think about it before, because it didn’t seem possible. But now maybe it is.

One thing she runs across in her research she reads over and over. _Often happens after a prolonged proximity to the other, or a shared trauma_.

They’ve definitely had some of that. But proximity isn’t possible right now… or is it?

—

She drives home that weekend. She hadn’t planned to—her assignments and tests have already piled up—but she wants to see Bellamy. They already call each other every other day, but they need _proximity_.

She texts him to let him know when she’s an hour out, and when Roan finally pulls the car into the lot of Bellamy’s apartment building, he’s already waiting for her. He’s in his rugged jacket, hair a mess, eyes warm, and she forgets about soulmarks for a second, and just remembers _him._ She leaps out and sprints towards him.

When she flings her arms around him without saying a word, he seems a little surprised at first, but then picks her up in a hug. She burrows her face into his neck and closes her eyes and breathes him in and _god_ it’s like in Bellamy’s arms, none of her problems matter; nothing can touch her but him.

“Can we not do this in broad daylight?” Roan asks in bored tones from behind her as he shuts the car door. “It would make my job easier.”

She lets go and instead hooks her arm into Bellamy’s.

Up in the apartment, Bellamy cracks open two beers. He offers Roan one, too, but he shakes his head.

“It’s unprofessional to drink on the job. As you should know.”

Bellamy puts the beer back. “Just testing you.”

Clarke looks around; they appear to be alone. “Where’s your sister and Aurora?” she asks, and Bellamy’s expression darkens.

“My mother’s at work. My sister… Last night,” he says with a scowl, “she found her soulmate.”

“What?” Clarke’s jaw drops. “Really?”

It turns out it’s one of _his_ colleagues, that Bellamy had invited over for drinks. But as soon as Lincoln spotted the butterfly soulmark on Octavia’s wrist, it was over. For both of them. And now she’s over at his place. Bellamy’s obviously not happy at how fast she’s jumping into things, and they’d fought about it.

“Not your first fight,” Clarke comments, noting the tension in his jaw. “It’ll be okay.”

“You didn’t hear her, Clarke. She was talking about moving in with him. She’s _seventeen_. She hasn’t even finished high school. How am I supposed to be okay with that?”

A lot of people would. Because they’re soulmates. But not Bellamy. Bellamy, disgruntled, goes on to rant about how Octavia’s shirking her classwork and _how_ is she going to get into a good college (because, naturally, it’s a given to him that she will go while he did not). Clarke has to hide her smile.

Over the next few hours, they talk and talk, and despite the fact that their last phone call was three days ago, it’s a marvel how much didn’t get said. She tells him all about her classes, how she met Lexa Woods (although they’re still barely on speaking terms), and the two stoners she’s somehow befriended. He’s passed his final tests at Eligius, he tells her, but it’s hard for him to get a solid job. He’s more recognizable compared to his colleagues.

Clarke can’t help but feel a little guilty about that. But in the interim, he’s taken a job within Eligius with the training center, and she’s proud of him.

She tells him about her mother’s second soulmark, but he already heard. She doesn’t tell him how the predisposition is genetic.

The conversation only ends when Aurora shows up, bags under her eyes but a kind smile on her face. She’s doing much better these days. “Clarke. Didn’t expect to see you here.” She shoots Bellamy a look, which he appears to ignore. “It’s late.”

“You should probably go home,” Bellamy agrees. Aurora retreats to her bedroom.

“I don’t want to go home,” Clarke says, and his eyebrows shoot up. She scrambles to cover. “I… can I just stay here?”

His eyes soften. He nods.

“This place isn’t exactly safe,” Roan huffs from his corner, nudging the flimsy locks on the door. “Not even a security system. What do you want me to do?”

“Curl up on the welcome mat,” Bellamy suggests without taking his eyes off Clarke.

“I was talking to _Clarke_.”

Clarke waves a dismissive hand at him. “You can go off-duty. Enjoy the night, I’ll be okay. Bellamy’s here.”

“You sure?”

She nods, and he leaves.

Later, they curl up in Bellamy’s bed together, and it’s just like old times that they fall asleep.

She visits her mother the next morning, and then spends the majority of Saturday doing homework at Bellamy’s kitchen table. On Sunday, she heads home.

She spends as many weekends as she can over the coming months back home. Sometimes it’s hard to force herself to get in the car for the six hour drive, especially after a particularly difficult week, but she forces herself. If she can just push them over the brink…

One morning, she wakes up and rubs her face with her non dominant hand, and that’s when she notices something on her inner wrist.

A smudge. A blur of darkness. The edges are not yet clear. But she knows what it is, instinctively.

She screams loud enough to get Roan sprinting from his side of the house over to hers, only to find her bouncing on her knees in her bedsheets, clutching her wrist and grinning uncontrollably.

She shoves her hand in his face, triumphant. “Look!”

He does. “Did you bite yourself?”

She scoffs. “It’s not a bruise, it’s a soulmark. It’s happening! And you thought I was pathetic.”

He shoves her wrist down, giving her a somewhat pitying look, which she doesn’t like. “I still do, just for the record.”

She’s on cloud nine. She’s got exams for the next few weeks, so she doesn’t have time to go home, but she’ll be there for Christmas. And she decides she’ll keep it a secret until then.

She can’t _wait_ to show Bellamy.

—

Bellamy’s eyes flit to the clock for the umpteenth time that night. Well past nine, and the party is still in full swing. In his ear, various voices are speaking from their respective areas, checking in with each other. Murphy says, “Nothing on second level, just some drunk people trying to get it on in the hallway. Ground floor?”

“Clear,” he murmurs, tugging at his tie. Eligius is doing security for the city’s awards night, and so he’s dressed in the standard black and white formal attire for his shift like everyone else. _Fifteen minutes left_. Clarke will have arrived home for the holidays by now.

He commands himself to focus when Miller sidles up to him and he barely even notices until he speaks.

“We’re not getting out til two, apparently.”

He releases a frustrated sigh. “Please tell me you’re joking.” He speaks a little too loudly; a curly-haired woman walking by glances his way. Professionalism. Right. He smiles at her warmly, and she stumbles a bit in her steps.

“I wish I was joking,” Miller says once she’s gone. “But there’s no shift relieving us. Anya’s orders. She loves pulling this shit, huh?”

Bellamy grinds his teeth together. Anya pushing her security officers to the limit was par for the course when they were training, but it’s not cute anymore.

He and Miller drift away from each other again, back to their job. Bellamy goes back on autopilot, scanning the room, the exits, and nothing of substance happens until it’s time for the awards to be doled out.

He leans against a wall and watches various police officers and emergency responders get their awards. An entire line of firefighters gets to shake hands with the mayor. One of them is the curly haired woman from earlier, and he watches her accept a certificate and extend her hand to shake.

That’s when he sees it. He’s across the room, and he blinks several times when he does. Then he pushes off and strides closer, keeping close to the wall until he can be absolutely sure of what he saw.

“And let’s give it up one more time for Gina Martin, and the rest of these heroic firefighters,” the mayor says into the mic. The curly-haired woman and her colleagues wave at the crowd, but Bellamy barely hears the applause around him.

Because this woman has a crown soulmark on her wrist.

—

Brunch the next day doesn’t go quite as planned.

Both he and Clarke are quiet as they wait for their orders to show up. They’re in a diner, away from the windows and from prying eyes, seated in a corner by an eager waiter.

“Exams went okay?” he asks her gruffly. She nods. She’s beaming, although Bellamy isn’t sure why, and she’s staying tight-lipped.

“How was work?” she asks instead, and Bellamy shrugs. He hadn’t got home until four in the morning.

Silence. Clarke’s lips are pressed together, and he can’t take it anymore. “Alright,” he says, dropping a sugar cube into his coffee. “Spit it out.”

She grins wider at that. “ _I_ should spit it out? You look like you have something to say, too.”

Bellamy drums his fingers against his coffee cup. “I think I found my soulmate,” he says without thinking.

It’s the first time he’s told anyone rather than just mulling it over in his head. There’s really no good way, or good time to say it.

She stills upon his words, eyes widening, and then her expression seems to wipe clear—completely blank, for a single second—before she smiles again. “Really?”

He nods.

“That’s… good. That’s really good. I’m happy for you.” Her smile doesn’t strike him as happy. “How did that happen?”

He swallows to work moisture into his mouth. “She’s a firefighter who was at the event last night. Her name’s Gina.” His voice becomes quieter towards the end.

There’s a rather long pause before Clarke speaks again. “Well? What’s she like?”

“I haven’t met her yet.” Just stared at her from far away, like a damn stalker. All he knows is that Raven knows her—he’d seen her congratulating Gina on her award—and that she has a sweet smile.

“What?” Clarke’s brows furrow. “Why not?”

Bellamy says nothing for a moment, focusing his gaze on the coffee mug. Their server comes back and puts their plates in front of them. After he’s gone, Bellamy says, “You think I should?”

Clarke picks up her fork and knife, and begins methodically cutting her sausage into neat, equal pieces. “People wait to be soulmated for _years_ , Bellamy. And some people still don’t find theirs. Of course you should. You’re going to get to spend the rest of your life with her.”

Bellamy’s heart begins to ache upon hearing those words. “Right.” He picks up his fork although his appetite is gone. “What was it you were going to say?”

She shakes her head. “Never mind.”

They eat in silence.

—

Despite Clarke’s advice, Bellamy doesn’t look for Gina Martin. It would be easy, he knows, to just ask Raven. People do this all the time. Soulmates don’t always just fall neatly into your life; sometimes they come out of nowhere and you have to run after them.

But Bellamy can’t bring himself to do it.

On the last day of Clarke’s winter break, she asks, “Did you talk to her?”

He knows she means Gina. “Yeah,” he lies, because to tell the truth would mean he would have to explain why he didn’t.

“Good. I—I want you to be happy.”

She sounds inexplicably near tears. “I am,” he says, bewildered, because at this moment he’d say anything to make her stop looking like that. “Clarke. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just.” She blinks several times, bites her lip, seems to find her composure again. “I don’t think I’m going to see you for a while.”

“You’re not coming home on the weekends anymore?”

“I don’t think I can. It was hard enough this semester. And it’s only going to get harder.”

“Then I’ll visit you,” he says, but she shakes her head, adamantly.

“I’m not taking you away from work and your family, Bellamy. And besides, I—I have to focus on school now.”

Her voice is crisp, controlled. Bellamy takes a breath and an involuntary step back. Then he nods, because, well, it makes sense. If he had the chance to go to school, he’d probably want to do the same.

He hugs her goodbye. It doesn’t feel quite like it used to. But maybe that’s what it means to grow up.

—

Clarke moves through her first week of the new semester in a fog. Her new soulmark has fully formed by the first Friday of January and it’s like a slap to the face. A clock face, striking twelve. She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t know anybody with it. Her new soulmate is a stranger, and whatever childish dreams she had about Bellamy Blake are hopeless. How stupid could she be, to think she could mold herself into his soulmate? He’s already got his own soulmate. Who’s Clarke to try and take him away from that?

Because she apparently likes to torture herself, she imagines their first meeting a dozen ways. Gina turning around, seeing Bellamy, then seeing Bellamy’s tattoo, and realizing this man is her soulmate. Lucky bitch.

Clarke startles herself with that last thought.

Eventually, she circles back to that paper Jasper had showed her, and the final words in the conclusion section that until now her eyes had refused to properly read. _While various associations to soulmarks have been explored in case studies, it should be noted that many have attempted to recreate the conditions needed to create a soulmate, and have not succeeded. Therefore, it can safely be assumed that science has not yet cracked the exact mechanism of fate._

She closes her laptop and goes to bed.

—

The next morning is even harder. Bellamy calls. She sends him to voicemail because she’s angry. Not at him, though.

She’s angry at fate. She knows it doesn’t make sense to be angry at an intangible thing, but _god_ , the universe is cruel. She wants the soulmark gone. But that won’t happen. Sometimes people try to get tattoos over their soulmarks—they never stick more than a day. The soulmark always wants to come through.

So over the weekend she decides on the next best thing—concealment. Long sleeved shirts, jackets, and if it’s too warm or it would raise eyebrows—makeup applied to her right wrist.

She still calls Bellamy as much as she can. They don’t talk about soulmates. It’s life updates only. Safe topics.

Her bitterness seeps into her daily life. She barely speaks to anyone. She ignores Monty and Jasper’s house party invitations. They probably want to parade her around as a celebrity anyway. She loses her temper when she overhears someone fake cough “murderer” and starts walking in their direction, fists balled, and Roan has to discreetly drag her away.

She’s enrolled in the second part of biology lab, a continuation of last semester’s, and ends up in the same time slot as Lexa Woods. Again, it’s the only empty seat. People must be intimidated by her.

Well, not Clarke. So she sits there.

“I didn’t say you could sit here,” Lexa says in her monotone.

“I didn’t ask,” Clarke snaps. It’s the first time she’s been less than polite to Lexa. But Lexa blinks.

As it turns out, rudeness was all it took to get Lexa to smile. And it’s a pretty smile, that reaches to her green eyes, and makes Clarke’s stomach do a flip.

Lexa’s got an infinity tattoo. Clarke doesn’t care. In fact, flipping the middle finger at fate seems like the perfect thing to do now.

—

It’s a February day and Bellamy is half asleep on the couch when Octavia walks in front of him and announces she’s moving across the country with Lincoln.

His eyes open. He knew Lincoln was being transferred to do security for a military company somewhere, but Octavia _going_ with him? Yeah, this should be good.

He moves to sit up, wincing. The one good thing about Clarke being gone is that he gets less recognition by association, and therefore more jobs. Eligius has a contract with several national sports associations, and last night they were hired for security for a football game in town. He’d had to break up more than one fight, and his body is not thanking him for all the drunken hits he took. “Can you repeat that?”

“You heard me.” Octavia lifts her chin.

“I did,” he agrees. “Just giving you a chance to rethink it.”

She glares at him. “I’m not changing my mind, Bellamy. This isn’t me asking for permission. This is me telling you.”

Yeah, he bets. She _would_ wait to spring something like this on him right now, while he’s sore, exhausted, sleep-deprived and otherwise not at the top of his mental game for a fight with her. He rubs his eyes blearily.

“You’ve known him for a few _months_ ,” he begins, and she shakes her head.

“Here we go. I knew you’d say this—”

“Because it’s _true_ , O!”

“So what if it’s true? I knew since the day I met him, and it’s the same now. I _love_ him, Bellamy, more than I’ve ever loved anyone. Wherever he goes, I go. He’s my home.”

That makes a part of him shrivel a little bit. That things could change that quickly in her heart. People love that idea, he knows; some people think it’s romantic, the thought that a soulmate can somehow outshine the love a person has for everybody else. Clarke always denied feeling that way, of course, but he wonders suddenly if she was really telling the truth. And now, to hear it from his sister’s mouth…

He rests his elbows on his knees, voice quiet. “What about school? What about—mom?” _What about me_?

“I’ll graduate, obviously,” Octavia says with an eye roll. “Lincoln’s not leaving til summer anyway. And mom… she’s okay with me going. Unlike you, she gets it.”

Bellamy laughs hollowly, rubbing his face. “Yeah, you’re right. I don’t,” he says, mostly to himself, but she hears.

“I _know_ you don’t get it,” she snaps. “I can’t just stay away from him. If _you_ had a soulmate you would understand what I mean, but you—” she stops, suddenly and intently studying his expression. He quickly schools his features into a mask.

But too late. Some realization dawns on Octavia’s face. “Wait. Bellamy, have you… met your soulmate?”

He drops his gaze to the carpet. She sits next to him, sounding stunned.

“You did. Oh, Bellamy. What’re they like?”

“I haven’t spoken to her.”

“ _What_?” He cringes at how shocked she sounds. “Why would you not talk to her?”

He releases a frustrated sigh. “I _don’t know_ , alright?”

She watches him for a long moment. Then, out of the blue: “Clarke’s got a girlfriend, you know.”

“What does _Clarke_ have to do with—” He pauses, brow furrowing. “Clarke’s got a girlfriend?” His sister nods, crossing her arms. He stares.

“She would’ve told me,” is his first response.

“Just because you tell Clarke everything doesn’t mean she returns the favour,” Octavia shoots back.

“I don’t tell Clarke _everything_ ,” he says darkly, but Octavia’s not listening, pulling out her phone. She shoves it in his hands and sits next to him on the couch.

“Look.”

He does. The heading flashes at him first; CLARKE GRIFFIN IN LOVE AGAIN! A candid photo, slightly blurry and zoomed in, but still clear enough. Clarke’s sitting at a cafe table in the sunshine, clearly not aware that she’s being watched. Her wavy blonde hair, pulled back in a half-up style, is unmistakable. So is her smile as she kisses a brunette girl.

Bellamy would’ve thought she would tell him about a new relationship. Then again, he supposes, he’d never asked specifically. He scrolls numbly through the article. The girl is Lexa Woods, CEO of Polaris Biotech. Polaris and Arkadia are famously competitor companies, and both have attempted takeovers of each other at different points in time, the article reads. _This love story rivals Romeo and Juliet, and although these two aren’t soulmates, we couldn’t be more thrilled. And judging by Clarke’s smiles these days, she feels the same_!

Bellamy hands Octavia’s phone back to her.

“Well?” Octavia asks impatiently.

“This has nothing to do with me.”

“Sure it doesn’t. Now tell me your soulmate’s name. I’m going to look her up for you.” Bellamy remains tight-lipped. Octavia considers him shrewdly. Then: “If you’re going to be this stubborn, at least think about your soulmate. She’s out there _waiting_ for you. Are you really going to be so selfish you leave someone without their other half?”

Bellamy releases a startled breath. That’s an angle he hadn’t considered—that it’s _selfish_ , to not meet Gina. That he’s depriving her of something. Of happiness.

He thinks again of Gina—her curly hair, her sweet smile, the light in her that was so obvious even from far away. It’s hard to imagine that Bellamy could make anyone happy, let alone her. She seems like happiness itself.

The thought surprises him, mostly because it feels like truth to him although he’s never even spoken a word to her.

Octavia can clearly sense he’s about to break. “Her name?”

“What if she doesn’t like me?” he croaks, his last defense. Octavia snorts.

“Of course she’ll like you. She’s your soulmate, she’s fated to. Now give. Me. Her. Name.”

Bellamy sighs.

—

He tells Octavia so she can freely stalk her on social media, then texts Raven later to ask about her. Raven immediately calls him.

“So you’re asking me now instead of two months ago when you saw her soulmark.” When Bellamy doesn’t say anything, she scoffs. “Why would you not give her a chance? Did you not like the way she looked or something? Or are you just scared? I can’t figure out whether you’re an asshole or just an idiot.”

Bellamy turns his eyes to the ceiling. “You through?”

Raven grumbles a bit and sets them up for dinner, and Bellamy’s heart beats wildly as he sits down across from Gina for the first time. He’s never been on an _actual_ date before. Romance was not his priority growing up. He doesn’t know how to make someone’s eyes light up with affection; he only knows how to make them go dark with desire.

But Gina smiles at him, gentle, and something about it calms him just a little bit. Then she puts her arm on the table, palm up.

His eyes automatically fall on the crown soulmark. Wordlessly, he pulls up his sleeve and reveals his identical one.

Gina arches a brow. “Well, didn’t I get lucky.”

Her voice is wry. Reminds him of Clarke, actually.

He hates himself for even making the comparison, but it’s already made. The more she talks, the more his walls crumble. But he also finds Gina different—her sense of humour isn’t quite as morbid, but more on the sarcastic side. Yet she’s sweet, genuinely so. He doesn’t say much but she’s good at filling his silences and doesn’t seem put off by them. He drinks in everything she tells him about her—that she’s his age, a young firefighter, that she too comes from a single parent family that struggled with money. In many ways her life story mirrors his… up to a point.

At the end of their night, she says, “I liked this, tonight. Do you want to meet again?”

It surprises him a bit because—well, although he likes her, she liked him too for some fucking reason despite him barely saying anything at all. “If you want, yeah.”

She watches him for another second. “You’re not what I expected. I’ve heard of you before,” she explains at his expression. “I don’t read tabloids, but it was big news everywhere when… well, you know.” Her face softens, and his heart wrenches at the reminder of that night, and the media circus, and how it screwed up him and Clarke forever while also pulling them closer which, he supposes, is what saved them from being pulled under.

“Look,” Gina says softly, “I’m not in a relationship with anyone, so I’m open to something between us. But are you and Clarke Griffin…”

He knows what she’s asking. “No.” He hesitates, thinking about an electrifying kiss from a lifetime ago. “But she’s always going to be important to me. Please don’t ask me to change that.” His voice is a little pleading, and he can’t help it, because he can’t, he _can’t_ imagine having to force his love for Clarke away.

But Gina nods, her eyes warm and understanding, and he thinks maybe, just maybe he doesn’t have to choose.

—

They start dating soon after that. The months go by. Soon it’s end of April, and Kane and Abby’s wedding that Clarke had invited his whole family to months ago.

“Bring Gina,” she instructs him over the phone, during her exam period. The event’s been scheduled so there’s just enough time for her to finish her school year and move out for the summer. “I want to meet her.”

“You sure?” he asks, bewildered.

“Bellamy, she’s your soulmate. Of course I want to meet your soulmate.”

He’s still quite nervous on the wedding day. It’s held in a park that the Griffin family rented out from the city, in the flower gardens, and there are so, so many attendees that he’s seen on TV or in movies; there are people who have fitted suits and designer clothes and flashy gold watches and huge diamonds hanging from their ears and—he feels very much out of place.

“Everyone here is so rich,” Gina whispers at his side, and he smiles at the confirmation that they were thinking the same thing. He grips her hand and they find a seat along with his mother, Octavia, and Lincoln.

Clarke’s one of the bridesmaids, and therefore very busy. He only sees her during the ceremony, walking up the aisle with the other bridesmaids, looking radiant with her hair in an artful twist, a robin’s egg blue dress hugging her figure.

Her eyes rove the room until she finds him, and then her eyes seem to light up just a bit, and she seems to involuntarily straighten. He feels the corners of his lips tick up. He hasn’t seen her in forever. He misses her, so much.

She gazes at him a beat too long, to the point where people are starting to turn their heads to see what Clarke Griffin is looking at, and he forces himself to become stoic. Then she quickly shifts her gaze just behind him, and a different kind of look takes over her expression.

Bellamy has to look.

There’s Lexa Woods, in the row in front of him, but further from the altar. Her expression is stoic, too, but not so much when she gazes at Clarke.

He turns back around, although there’s a painful twist in his belly.

Abby and Kane take their vows, and then it’s over. Clarke finally approaches him during the reception.

“Bellamy,” she says, and he reaches for her automatically, to bring her into a hug. She hugs him tight, and then lets go a moment too soon to look at Gina. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

Bellamy examines her expression and decides she means it.

He lets Clarke and Gina chat while he drinks champagne, and listens to their conversation. They seem to get on well enough, which is a relief. He supposes he always got along with Wells too. But how could he not? He knew Wells loved Clarke, would do anything for her. Even if he hadn’t seen it in their interactions he would still know it from the soulmark on his wrist. How could Bellamy dislike someone who he knew for certain would make Clarke happy?

He leaves them alone to talk, going to the bar for a drink. He changes course when he sees his mother is lingering close to there, alone, but no drink in hand. He knows it’s hard sometimes to resist for her. But she does. She hasn’t had a relapse since she watched Wells and Jake Griffin die. From the distant look in her eye, there’s something on her mind.

“Mom,” he says, and she seems to snap out of it.

“Bellamy.” She smiles at him, smooths her hand down his arm, frowns at the wrinkles in his shirt. “You should’ve let me iron this.” Bellamy sighs and pulls his arm away. She lets him. “Your father would never let me, either. You look so much like him, you know.”

Bellamy’s heard that before. He’s heard it when she’s crying, when she was drunk, when she was happy, when she was angry, too. He just doesn’t know where she’s going with it this time.

“It’s a beautiful wedding,” his mother continues. “I spoke with Abby earlier. She seemed so happy, didn’t she?” Bellamy doesn’t respond, not wanting to admit he’d barely paid attention to the actual bride of the day. “It’s not every day someone gets to marry their soulmate a second time.”

Bellamy suddenly knows exactly where she’s going with this.

Before he can stop her, she adds, “Maybe we’ll be at your wedding next.”

He can’t speak for a moment. “I’m twenty.”

“I’m not saying right now,” Aurora replies. “Just, don’t wait. You never know what’s going to happen. But right now, your soulmate is _here_.” She nods across the floor, where Clarke and Gina are still talking animatedly. Gina looks relaxed now. Clarke, too, but she shifts from foot to foot in her heels. Bellamy can tell she’s tired from standing all day.

He gazes at Clarke while his mother says, “There are many things I regret, but marrying my soulmate young wasn’t one.”

“Do you regret my father?” The words fly from his lips before he can stop them. He’s wondered this many times. Only now had the courage to ask.

A long silence. He knows his mother’s not going to answer.

Instead she says, “Octavia’s leaving home. You should, too.”

“Mom.”

“You don’t have to take care of me,” Aurora says, her voice quieter. “I’m not going to drink. Live your life.”

That makes him sort of angry. Like he can just turn off the caring, the worrying that has been driven into him since he was six. He crosses his arms and doesn’t respond, because then he might say something he would regret.

His mother pats him once more on the arm. “Go back to her. She’s missing you right now.” Then she reaches up to touch his face and, like many times over recent years, Bellamy is not sure who she sees when she looks into his eyes.

—

Clarke decides, rather bitterly, that if she had to form a soulmate from clay for Bellamy Blake, Gina would be exactly what she’d make.

She’s a firefighter, selfless and kind like him; she’s gentle in the way Bellamy responds to; and while she’s not extraordinarily pretty, she has a quiet sort of beauty about her. She makes him smile as Clarke observed but she doesn’t take his shit, as Clarke also observed from the anecdotes Gina had told her about him in a rather exasperated, but fond manner. Gina is perfect for Bellamy, and Clarke can see why Bellamy has become so quickly enamoured with her.

But then again, they were built to fall for each other.

When Bellamy comes back to them—he’d been talking to his mother—he puts his hand on Gina’s back, and Gina leans into him, and Clarke feels very much like she’s watching from outside the glass. Especially so when she drifts away to talk to someone else, and when she looks at them next, Gina whispers something in his ear, and he responds, and Gina’s eyes go dark.

In some ways it makes Clarke feel worse that she didn’t feel that spark between her and Wells. Maybe they were too young to, but she knows she felt it for Bellamy more than once, so that’s no excuse. She’s probably just a horrible soulmate.

Lexa arrives at her side, and it reminds her she no longer cares about soulmates.

“Let’s go,” she says to Lexa, grabbing her hand.

Lexa doesn’t move. “You care about him.”

It’s not a question. There’s no judgment or jealousy behind it, but maybe a bit of curiosity. Clarke doesn’t answer right away.

“He’s my friend, so yes. I care about all my friends.”

“But you care about him more.”

Clarke spins to take Lexa’s face in her hands, desperate to finish this conversation. “Do you want to talk about Bellamy, or do you want to get back to your hotel room so I can rip your dress off?”

That shuts her up well enough.

—

Over the summer and next school year, Clarke grows closer to Lexa. Watching her run her company is fascinating, and the tribulations she has to go through as a young, female CEO to prove to the board of directors that she’s competent is sort of… very inspiring.

It all makes Clarke more interested in Arkadia.

“It’s about time,” her mother groans when she calls to inquire about it. “I’ll set you up.”

So between studying at school, Clarke takes a leadership role at Arkadia in the city she’s in. She starts aiming for a double major in biomed and business, too.

Lexa seems to admire this. “You’re a natural at this,” she tells her, stroking her hair away from her forehead one night while Clarke’s looking at the AGM reports. “Now, if we just merged our companies, imagine how powerful we could be…”

Clarke laughs and pushes her head away playfully. “Would you stop with that?” It’s a running joke between them, the history of takeover attempts between Arkadia and Polaris. “It’s not going to happen.”

Lexa gazes at her, something soft in her eyes. “Stranger things have.”

—

Roan goes on leave for two months, during which Clarke has a different bodyguard; and when he comes back, he seems a bit surprised at how Clarke and Lexa have grown in that short time.

“I just didn’t expect it,” he says when Lexa’s gone from the house, and Clarke’s stirring pasta for them both because the boundary between bodyguard and friend blurred a long time ago. “I thought she was a rebound.”

Clarke doesn’t bother to ask who Roan thinks she’s a rebound from. “She’s _not_.”

“She doesn’t seem like your type.”

“Why not? Yeah, she was a little rude at first, but once you get to know her, she’s kind, and thoughtful, and loyal, and—What are you smiling about?”

“Just sounds like someone else we know.”

Clarke throws her wooden spoon at him.

—

Two years pass like this. Octavia’s across the country with Lincoln, and they elope when Octavia turns eighteen. Clarke can’t say she’s surprised, although Bellamy and his mother are beside themselves that they weren’t told.

Every time Clarke sees Bellamy, he seems even closer with Gina. And with that closeness, Clarke feels a certain reluctance to touch him the way she used to; those thoughtless touches, those cheek kisses, those days they spent cuddling on a bed together just because. Even though it wasn’t ever in an intentional way, it was just for the closeness of it, it doesn’t feel right anymore. And she misses it—she misses freely being able to thread her hand through his dark hair, press her thumb into the dimple in his chin and watch him grin at her, to grab his hand, to fall asleep on his chest.

She misses their childhood, and the time when she barely thought about her soulmark at all.

As Clarke enters her fourth year of college, she sits on several boards at her mother’s company. She’s still deciding what she wants to do after this year. Her mother had suggested a graduate degree. She’s written her MCAT, too, in case she might like to go to med school. But Lexa has another suggestion.

“Get your MBA. It’ll help you, at the company,” Lexa encourages.

Clarke has enjoyed the amount of responsibility she’s been given, but she hesitates at this. “I don’t know if running Arkadia is what I want to do yet. I’m not that good at this.”

“Clarke, with the work you do for Arkadia, you’re practically the COO.” Clarke’s silent. “You were born for it. Same as me.”

The words are simple, and they make Clake even more indecisive. But she has enough money to continue being indecisive—so she applies to a wide variety of programs, and tells herself to decide in the spring.

She comes home for Thanksgiving that year, and as is custom she calls Bellamy to invite him and Gina for Thanksgiving dinner at the Griffin mansion.

Except Bellamy barely seems to hear her. “Clarke,” he says, and although it’s over the phone, Clarke finds herself stiffening. He says her name in a careful way, like he did from the gates of the Griffin mansion when he found a dead groundskeeper, like he knew their lives would never be the same again because of what he was going to say.

Her body folds into itself as he says, “I proposed to Gina.”

“Oh,” she manages, her voice bright even as she sinks to the kitchen floor. The truth is, she should’ve seen it coming. They’re soulmates. They’ve been in a serious relationship more than two years. She’s _watched_ them grow together. She pushed him towards it, in fact. “Congratulations.”

There’s a long, thick pause. Then Bellamy speaks again, his voice rough.

“Clarke, I’m sorry I—”

She cuts him off. “You don’t need to tell me anything. You’re soulmated to her, so you’re marrying her. It’s simple.”

He goes quiet. Clarke, determined to switch topics, asks about his plans for Thanksgiving. They exchange details of Thanksgiving dinner and then hang up. Clarke slides to the floor.

It’s just not fair. Why does his happiness have to come at the expense of hers?

She peels back her sleeve and peeks at the clock face tattoo on her right wrist, that’s been sitting there mocking her for so long. Her best kept secret. She supposes all she has to do is flash it at a paparazzi camera and in a few days the world would find her new soulmate for her. Then maybe she’d be able to move on.

She drops her sleeve back in place. She refuses to give fate the satisfaction. Who says she can’t be happy with someone who isn’t her soulmate—someone who she’s built a relationship with out of trust and mutual passion and closeness?

 _You mean Bellamy_ , her heart says.

 _No, Lexa_ , her head scolds.

—

It’s a difficult night. She goes to Lexa’s place, a beautiful penthouse off campus. Roan eyes her disapprovingly, like he knows what she’s going to do, but he drops her off and leaves without comment.

Lexa watches her get increasingly drunk in her kitchen but doesn’t try to stop her, doesn’t ask her what exactly is on her mind. But Clarke has a lot on her mind she wants to put out there.

“Did I ever tell you about Wells?” Clarke murmurs, pouring them both another drink. “My soulmate. Sometimes I think I got him killed.”

Clarke starts crying, and Lexa pulls her head onto her shoulder. This is at least one kind of guilt they both bear. Lexa’s soulmate, Costia, died in a car accident they were both in. Together they are two tragic, mismatched broken hearts.

But Clarke’s never told her the exact circumstances of what happened the night her father and soulmate died. She does now, though. She relives Wells Jaha’s last day in a hushed voice, with hiccups and sips of alcohol in between.

“Why do you feel guilty about Wells?” Lexa asks finally. “He tried to take the attacker down, but you didn’t ask him to do that. He’s responsible for his own actions.”

Clarke smiles bitterly. “So am I.”

Lexa seems to wait for more, but Clarke doesn’t offer it.

“I never understood why those people were in your house to begin with,” Lexa says. “Were they really stalkers, like the papers said?”

Clarke laughs bitterly. “That’s just what my mom wanted everyone to think. But they were after my _mom_ for some reason. I think it had something to Arkadia somehow. She never lets me ask her about it, or talk about it. She’s just worried about _stocks_. Can you believe that?”

“Probably a good idea,” Lexa says eventually, ever the pragmatist.

Clarke shakes her head in the dark, drowsy and sad and bitter about so many things. “No, it wasn’t. None of it was.”

—

Clarke wakes up the next day in Lexa’s bed with a hell of a hangover. The clock reads ten in the morning. Lexa’s gone; probably with a morning class. Clarke drags herself out and makes herself breakfast before leaving to get ready for her own day of classes.

Octavia calls her up later, asking for her help in her brother’s wedding preparations, and Clarke agrees, of course, because what else is she supposed to do? Then she sulks around or a while more.

And she doesn’t think much more about that night for a long time.

—

It’s many months later, April, when Clarke has fallen asleep at her study table with her textbooks open and is jolted awake by her phone ringing.

She squints at the clock; it’s seven in the morning. It’s the middle of her last ever exam period, what’s her mother thinking calling her this early?

“Clarke,” her mother says hurriedly. “Please, I can explain.”

She begins talking, but very fast. Clarke’s too tired to really understand the words she’s saying. Something about stocks? She gets up, stretching and moving to the kitchen to make coffee, putting her phone on speaker as she does.

“—and Lexa’s certainly very on the ball, I don’t know how she got an offer organized so fast—”

The mention of her long time girlfriend is what makes Clarke’s mind finally wakes up to the task at hand. She pauses and squints. “Mom, what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the night your father and Wells died, Clarke,” her mother says, voice sharp. “Have you looked at the newspapers today?”

Clarke abandons her coffee and opens her laptop at the kitchen table instead. “Which ones are we talking about, the tabloids or the business ones?”

“Both.”

There’s a bad feeling growing in Clarke’s gut. She opens both. Headlines jump out.

ARKADIA STOCKS PLUMMET.

Clarke clicks through to the next.

THE TRUTH OF JAKE GRIFFIN’S DEATH—NOT STALKERS!

_Recent insider information has revealed the truth about the award winning actor’s death—and it was about his wife._

Clarke scans the article until she finds something that leaps out at her.

 _Arkadia’s reputation in biotechnology has a darker history behind it. Over twenty years ago, they dabbled in soulmark research. And without complete ethics approval, they tested it on unwitting subjects. The trial broke their bonds with their soulmates. Their soulmarks, completely erased. And those people vowed revenge_...

Clarke’s speechless as she reads. Her mother, in the growing silence, says quietly, “I wanted to get ahead of it. I wanted you to hear my side first—”

“So it’s true. Those people who attacked us didn’t have soulmarks. I told you that, and you said Bellamy was seeing things. You _lied to me_.” Silence. Clarke’s anger mounts further. “Arkadia did this. You botched an experiment and tried to hush it up and _that’s_ what got Dad and Wells killed!”

Abby sighs. “I know, Clarke. But we thought there might be a market in soul fate determinants. That there was an opportunity in changing soulmarks, matched from birth or after.” Her voice becomes a quiet, scratchy whisper. “We should have known better than to try and change fate.”

Even with her involvement in the company she hadn’t known about this. It must’ve been tightly under wraps. “So what happened?”

“There was a misunderstanding with our study participants. I take the blame for that, for not making sure they understood the risks of the medication we were giving them. That it could erase the marks completely and leave them with no soulmate at all. And I suppose that was worse.”

Clarke shakes her head, over and over, unable to come up with any words. “Was this legal?” She manages, and when her mother clearly hesitates, she says, disgusted, “I can’t believe you, mom.”

“Ethics didn’t love the idea,” Abby admits. “Dr. Singh went ahead with a small trial group anyway. I only found out later that she had, and then I didn’t blow the whistle. I take the blame for that, too. After your father and Wells died, I looked into all the remaining participants of the study. I accounted for all of them but one. That’s why I wanted you to have a bodyguard so much, Clarke. I couldn’t risk that someone else might come after you for my mistakes.”

Her head is spinning, but there’s more. Clarke scrubs her hands over her face. “What were you saying about Lexa?”

“Oh,” her mother says, and her voice becomes quiet. “Yes. Well, because of this story breaking out, our stocks have plummeted. Polaris Biotech has put out a tender offer to our stakeholders.”

Clarke can’t speak. Lexa’s trying for a corporate public takeover.

No. Too much of a coincidence, that she had everything organized to do it right when this story broke.

No… she was planning this.

Because Clarke told her what really happened that night. Clarke had trusted her, and opened up. Clarke hadn’t had all the pieces of the story, of course; Lexa would’ve needed more. So she’d hired others, poked around until she found the whole story out. And then found a few news outlets who’d pay the price for the biggest story of the quarter.

“N—no…” she mutters wildly as she scrolls through the stories faster and faster. She doesn’t want to believe it. She can’t believe Lexa would do this. “Polaris—Polaris can’t take the company from us. The stakeholders aren’t going to take this bid, right? Everything will be okay?”

There’s a long silence that confirms what she’s dreading. Then her mother sighs. “Clarke, things are not going to be okay for a very long time.”

—

Clarke calls Lexa next. As soon as she answers, Clarke shouts, “What did you do, Lexa?”

Lexa appears to have prepared for this. “I’m sorry, Clarke. Please let me explain.”

“Explain _what?”_ Her voice careens several octaves higher. “You’re taking over my mother’s company. _My_ company.” Her heart breaks, and she can’t stop tears from leaking into her voice. “I _trusted you_.”

“And I always told you how much our two companies could do together, merged,” Lexa says clearly.

Clarke laughs and it sounds unhinged. “When Griffin Pharmaceuticals and Jaha Tech became Arkadia, _that_ was a merger. This is a _hostile takeover_.”

“Whatever it may be, with Polaris’ resources, and Arkadia’s talent, we could change the world, Clarke.”

“I don’t care about any of that. I trusted you that night and you used it against me. My mother is going to be put on trial!”

“I didn’t know there wasn’t ethics approval for the trials. If I had I might not have done it. The papers found that out for themselves.”

“Oh, great. That makes me feel so much better.”

“Don’t make this personal, Clarke. It’s not. You _know_ how long Polaris’ board of directors has wanted to toss me to the curb.” Of course she does; it’s a struggle she’s become quite intimate with, Lexa having told her the details. “They were about to, so I had to give them a show of strength. I had to show them what I was made of.”

“We could have figured it out together,” Clarke grits out. “If you had just _talked to me_.”

“I knew you wouldn’t agree. They forced my hand, plain and simple. You would’ve done the same in my position.”

All the fight drains out of Clarke. “I’m not you, Lexa. I don’t think you ever understood that.”

Before Lexa can say anything in reply, Clarke ends the call, tosses her phone on the counter, and stares out the window.

The way Lexa made it sound, it seemed like she expected Clarke to understand what she’d done. But she doesn’t. How could she? She’s exposed a dark secret of Clarke’s company to the world, gotten her mother in trouble with the law, and all for a corporate takeover?

Clarke barks a laugh, a sudden, harsh sound in the quiet of her kitchen.

It’s such a wild thing—to love someone for years, so deeply; to be convinced that enough time had passed for you to be certain that this could work—and then one day realize you were never on the same page, not really. Clarke’s not even sure how it’s possible. She was so sure—she was _so damn sure_ that she could make a life with someone who wasn’t her soulmate. And look where that got her.

And she’s suddenly immeasurably glad she never tried to force it between her and Bellamy. If she had ruined them by playing at soulmates, she’s not sure she could ever forgive herself.

—

Her phone blows up all day. All week, really, and into the next. Family, friends, classmates, acquaintances, Lexa. She doesn’t pick up any of them. She finishes her exams and hopes to hell she passed, because her already distracted studying turned to shit when the papers started talking about how Abby Griffin was probably going to prison for ethics violations as a CEO.

She’s supposed to come home after exams and before graduation, but she can’t quite motivate herself to pack up and go back to the city where her life’s already fallen apart. If she just stays here, maybe it’s like it happened to someone else.

Someone knocks on the door. Clarke puts her pillow over her ears. Very few people know where she lives. Lexa again, she’d guess. She’d sent many apologies. Clarke doesn’t much care.

The shareholders loved the offer Polaris put out. In just two short weeks, Arkadia has been swallowed up by Polaris. The board of directors, dissolved. Lexa was so goddamn efficient with every step. The business pundits have been praising her decisions all week.

Her phone buzzes. Roan. They often just call each other when they’re on their opposite sides of the house.

“Should I open the door? It’s Bellamy,” he says as soon as she picks up.

“No,” she says petulantly, then blinks. “Wait. Bellamy? Really?”

She can almost hear her bodyguard rolling his eyes. “I’m going to open the door.”

He hangs up before Clarke can say anything. Bellamy? He’s driven here? For what?

Oh, no. No no no. Clarke leaps up from the bed and runs to the bathroom. She dabs concealer over her second soulmark first of all. Then she assesses the rest of the situation. Her hair, unwashed for god knows how long, is a mess. Her clothes, wrinkled. She hasn’t taken a shower in days. And fuck! There’s a week’s worth of dishes in the sink out there.

She knows Bellamy doesn’t care about all that, but that’s not the issue here. The issue is if Bellamy thinks she’s not doing well with this whole situation and then starts worrying about her for no reason. She doesn’t need him worrying about her. He has Gina, he has a wedding soon, he’s got a life, and he doesn’t need her problems on top of his—

“That bad, huh?”

She whips her head around, still clutching the edges of her bathroom sink. The door is ajar, so she can see well into her bedroom and to the doorway, where Bellamy is standing. He’s wearing his Eligius jacket and a gentle smile and he’s so familiar, evokes such nostalgia of her charmed childhood and better days while standing in the mess that is her drab college bedroom, that she could almost cry right here.

He must see the change in her face, because his smile fades, and he steps towards her. “Clarke.”

All thoughts of pretending like she’s okay flood away. Her face crumples, and she folds right into his arms.

—

Bellamy had heard because his sister called him. And then he called Clarke, except she didn’t answer, and he knew why.

Although his wedding was in a week, he’d known he couldn’t leave Clarke like this. He told Gina quietly over her dinner that he had to go see how she was doing, and that she could come with him if she liked.

But Gina, after searching his eyes, simply patted his cheek. “Go help your friend. I’ll hold down the fort here.”

There’s a certain trust in her voice he’s not sure he deserves. He remembers Raven telling him once: _She’s too good for you_.

He leaves anyway.

He and Clarke spend the first day cleaning the house together, methodically. Mostly to give Clarke a task to focus on. As they do, Clarke tells him everything. About Lexa. The corporate takeover. Her mother. The dark secret of Arkadia.

They keep finding new things to clean, and although Clarke keeps muttering it only became that way after the news broke, he suspects it was never very clean to begin with.

Roan confirms this when he voices the thought. “She lives in a pigsty.” Clarke throws a sponge at him.

“Didn’t I tell you you could leave an hour ago?”

Bellamy hides a smile mostly because it’s the closest to normal she’s sounded all day.

He’s faster with things than she is; he wasn’t a housekeeper’s son for nothing, although she does try. She watches him efficiently clean grime off the stovetop with the scraper and sighs and says, “What can I do that will actually help?”

“Go clean the cupboards,” he says, and is rewarded with another glimmer of a smile.

It’s sort of strange to see her get down on her knees like she did so many years ago and wipe at the stains on her cupboards (seriously, how did that tomato sauce get there?), and it feels normal for a while, at least until the sun starts to set and he turns around from his latest task only to realize that Clarke has long since stopped scrubbing, and is simply staring into space.

He pulls off his gloves and goes to sit next to her on the floor. He doesn’t ask her what’s wrong this time; he does what Clarke always did for him, which was give her the space to speak if she wanted to, and sit with him if she didn’t.

“I loved her,” she murmurs at last. “And the funny thing is, I think she does love me back. So why would she do this?”

“Sometimes people who love you hurt you,” he replies, from experience.

She looks at him fiercely. “Then they didn’t love you very much at all.”

He blinks a few times, unsure how to respond. Clarke becomes quiet, then says, “I guess that’s why soulmarks exist.”

He has no idea what she’s talking about, and suspects she’s talking to herself more than anything, but he asks anyway, “Why’s that?”

“To tell you who you can trust with your heart.” She looks at him then, raises a hand as if she might lay it against his cheek, but then seems to think better of it. “I’m glad you’re marrying Gina.”

His heart aches.

The proposal had been an impulse one night. He’d just come to Gina’s place from his mother, who he’d found in tears after work. After much interrogation, she finally revealed the reason: her latest boyfriend had left without leaving a note, and stolen her old wedding ring.

Bellamy hadn’t even known this new boyfriend existed. But the bruise on his mother’s jaw he’d noted the week before suddenly made more sense. And she refused to give up his name, so Bellamy couldn’t even beat the shit out of him for his trouble.

He went to Gina’s, the crown soulmark on her wrist sharpening into focus when she opened the door. Her sweet smile that he had helplessly fallen in love with. And he remembered, again, Octavia accusing him of being selfish. He wondered what the hell he was waiting for.

Clarke’s face, as it was wont to do, appeared in his mind’s eye with barely a thought. He remembered the men who weren’t his mother’s soulmate, hurting her over and over again. He didn’t want to be one of those men to someone else. There was nothing to wait for.

So he proposed, and that was that.

Presently, Clarke murmurs, “You’ll take care of each other,” and he’s scared suddenly. He doesn’t like the way she sounds, the finality of it.

“Clarke,” he says slowly. “Are you going to come home?”

She turns her head away, and he watches her eyelashes sweep down. “Everyone is going to look at me. Friends, family, the company, news, the paparazzi, my mother, Kane, Lexa. They’ll want to know what I do next. With the company, if my mom goes to—to prison. Kane’s staying on the board of directors, but I was so involved with things, and I’m Abby Griffin’s daughter—” She stops, burying her face in her hand.

She doesn’t want to face the mistakes she’s made. He puts a tentative hand on her shoulder, not knowing what else to do. He’s usually not the one initiating physical contact, but it feels like the right thing.

And it is, he knows that when Clarke sighs and grabs his hand and leans into it. “I’m going to come to your wedding,” she says. “I promised you that. But then I’m going to leave.”

“Clarke.”

“I can’t do it, Bellamy. I can’t face them all. I can’t be the leader they all want me to be.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

—

For what it’s worth, she does come to the wedding. He sees her the day before, where she’s helping with the decorations, ruining a pretty white dress with dust and dirt as she helps move furniture. It’s held in the same small church Aurora was married in.

On the day of, he keeps his eyes ahead, at the aisle, at Gina. He makes sure he does not look away from her deep brown eyes even once. He doesn’t know where his gaze might stray if he does.

People cheer as they kiss. Gina giggles and nudges his nose with hers. “I’m so happy.”

He smiles and kisses her again. He’s happy, too. He loves Gina, of course he’s happy.

But a part of him, too, feels this ceremony is what the rest of his life has been—duty.

He brushes that off. Still, it’s hard to be happy when your best friend is not, and he can feel her misery from across the room. It rubs off on him a little bit.

Clarke tries, though. He looks her way during the reception, a chagrined smile on his face, and she smiles back, standing next to Raven, who she’d met earlier that day. She’d put in some effort for the event, her hair curled, diamond stud earrings, and bringing a plus one—who, Bellamy supposes, was supposed to be Lexa, but has been replaced last minute with a nerdy looking, black-haired guy who introduces himself as Monty Green when they meet during dessert.

Bellamy recognizes the name. Clarke had talked about him. “Nice to finally meet one of Clarke’s college friends,” he says, shaking his hand.

“Friendship is one word for it,” Monty says. “Me and my roommate sell her weed and bad advice.”

Bellamy looks at Clarke, who shrugs dispassionately.

“I didn’t want the catering to go to waste.”

He eyes them, bemused. “Right.” Clarke’s still somewhat expressionless and he doesn’t like it. “Clarke, can I talk to you for a second?”

She nods, and follows him, out the reception hall and into the corridor.

He doesn’t know quite what to say until they lean against opposite walls and she finally looks him in the eye. There’s a silence, a rift between them he doesn’t quite know how to reach over.

Then the words come as natural as anything. “You’re just as important to me as Gina is. If you need anything, I’ll be there. Nothing can change that.”

Clarke gave that to him with Wells. He’ll give that to her, too. Bellamy and Clarke may not be soulmates as designed by fate, but that doesn’t mean they have to be alone.

Clarke blinks several times, her eyes shiny. “Well, good,” she replies, a bit unsteady. “Because you’re never getting rid of me.”

He barks a relieved laugh and welcomes her into his arms when she pushes off the wall to hug him. “Damn right.”

—

That night, Clarke leaves the festivities early and goes home. With Monty, of course. She shows him the guest room.

“Thanks for being my plus-one,” she tells him, and he shrugs, his hands stuffed in his suit jacket pockets. He looks very out of place without his customary hoodie.

“No problem. I completely understand not wanting to look like a loser at family events.”

“I’m not a loser,” Clarke mutters. “I’m _fun_.”

Monty raises his eyebrows and pops a mint in his mouth that he’d stolen from the reception, but doesn’t argue. “So where’s that autograph you promised me?”

Clarke sighs and retreats to a storage room to find one of many autographed DVD sets of her father’s movies. She picks one out and brings it back to Monty.

His face splits into a grin as he accepts it. “Clarke, has anyone ever told you you’re the best?”

“No, but someone’s told me I’m a loser.”

“Really? They should go get fucked.” Monty admires Jake Griffin’s loopy signature. “Jasper and I owe you big time.”

Yeah, they’re definitely going to get a lot of money for that one. Clarke doesn’t mind, though. There’s tons of those lying around.

“It’s okay,” she says. “Just… thank you. For treating me like a human.”

He looks up, and his expression softens, like he’s understanding this isn’t just a random gift. It’s the least she can do as a token of gratitude for the friendship Monty and Jasper have given her over the course of four years.

“We tried to milk money out of you,” Monty points out.

“But at least you were transparent about it.” They share a grin. Then Monty says, “I still owe you anyway. Any time you want to hang out for a bit at my family’s farm, give me a shout. I promise you won’t run into paparazzi there.”

“Thanks, Monty.”

She hugs him goodnight and heads upstairs to her own bedroom. She roots around for a very specific, five thousand dollar brand of wine, and climbs to the roof. It’s chilly out, and a little damp from rain earlier in the day, but she doesn’t mind. She sits there in her pretty dress and opens the wine. She tilts her head up and searches the sky for a star she’s so familiar with she can pick it out of a million.

And then she sighs, a long, tension-relieving sigh as she can finally let her mask of indifference slip.

“Hey, Wells,” she whispers. “We haven’t talked in a while.” She swallows and tries again. “Bellamy got married today. Who would’ve thought, huh?”

Clarke saw how intently he gazed at Gina as she walked down the aisle towards him. He didn’t look away, not even once, even as Clarke half-wished he would. She’d known then that she would have to settle for second priority, no matter how much Bellamy tries to tell her she’s just as important. Because Bellamy is loyal, and he’s a family man, and when he starts a family with Gina, that’ll be it. Logically, she knows that. It still hurts.

And god, she has to get rid of that hurt. She nearly ruined his wedding day, she knows that. Bellamy should’ve been happy, but he looked strangely sad, stoic throughout, and she feels like it’s her fault, dragging his mood down along with hers. And she refuses to do that anymore.

It’s time to exorcise Bellamy Blake from her soul, because he clearly doesn’t belong there.

“I have to tell you something stupid, Wells,” she says. She looks down at her feet because she can’t look at Wells when she says it. “I love Bellamy in a way that I shouldn’t. I’m sure you already knew that. You didn’t hold it against me, which I appreciate.” She half-laughs, hating herself, and swigs the wine. That guilt will never go away. It’s even worse because the Wells she knew and loved—because she did love him, deeply, just not in the way people wanted her to—wouldn’t ever have judged her for this. He was a perfect confidante that way. And he still is the perfect confidante for the one thing she can’t talk about with Bellamy: _Bellamy_.

“I wish we got to talk about it when you were alive. Maybe I could explain myself better. The problem is, I can’t love Bellamy the way he deserves. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it must be, because if I did then fate would have made us soulmates.” She struggles with herself a moment, blinking back tears. “But then I wouldn’t have had you, so I guess that was the tradeoff.”

She wants someone to tell her it’s not her fault, that no, she hadn’t hurt two dear friends by splitting her soul between them, that no, her love doesn’t break people. But of course, the stars don’t reply. They never do.

“It’s time to let it go,” she whispers. “I have to accept my love wasn’t enough for either of you. If it was, you’d still be alive, and Bellamy… well, Bellamy. Obviously I wasn’t born with the ability to love him enough. Not on this planet.” Her gaze drifts back towards the stars. “But maybe, on a planet without soulmarks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for slogging through this gigantic part 1! I’m working on finishing part 2 as we speak, and hopefully it will be a little more interesting and succinct, but i’m really not a good judge. 
> 
> And in case anyone was wondering, yes, i am indeed STILL an unabashed slut for comments if you'd like to make my day!!
> 
> @wellsjahasghost on tumblr


	2. fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s in his head, in his heart, in his soul. The impact she’s had on his life is something he’s not sure he could ever explain to anyone. Loving her is as natural as breathing. Just as vital too.
> 
> And he knows he’s a horrible husband for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the response to part 1, it blew me away. It’s funny that i was worried it might be boring since there was a lot of Plot™, because clearly that wasn’t the case for most of you. Unfortunately now i’m like “wait…. Is PART 2 gonna be boring now in comparison??” imposter syndrome 4 lyfe!
> 
> Heads up for those who appreciate warning: some sexual content in this chapter. Just a few scenes, but they’re there, and they earn the M rating.
> 
> And of course, huge thanks to my friend and beta reader Sjaan @readymachine. As you would say, Sjaan the Comma Killer, you’re a Comma Killin’ Queen.

The summer after marrying Gina, Bellamy finally gets his first serious job interview in executive security: a spot on the security detail of one Finn Collins.

Raven helped him get the interview.

“You’re not the only one with famous friends,” she’d said mysteriously when he asked. She was clearly waiting for him to ask how she knew Finn Collins, so although he _was_ curious, he didn’t ask, and he could tell it pissed her off. That made him slightly happy.

In any case, he knows Finn Collins. Everyone does. He’s one of Hollywood's hottest young movie stars. People have compared him to Jake Griffin as an actor because he has the same boyish charm or something. Bellamy doesn’t actually know. That’s just what his sister had told him. She’d had a crush on him briefly in high school.

He’s nervous on the morning he’s set to go to meet the guy. He has to make a good impression. His lack of anonymity and association with the deaths of Clarke’s dad and Wells has made it a struggle to find a long term job, so an offer like this is rare.

Gina smooths his shirt over his chest, and smiles up at him. She’s dressed for work, too. “The interview will be _fine_ ,” she tells him, tapping her finger over his chest and tilting her face towards his. “You’re good at your job.”

“If he doesn’t like me, then that doesn’t matter.”

“Just be yourself.”

Bellamy privately thinks to himself that if he does that, he’ll come off as an asshole. He doesn’t exactly have a great track record when it comes to first encounters with celebrities.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he replies instead, and kisses her goodbye. On his drive there, he rehearses what he’s going to say. He runs through every interview question he can think of.

When he arrives at the gates of the mansion, he sort of has to laugh. Finn Collins’ property makes the Griffins look like paupers. The place is ridiculously decked out.

The rest of Finn’s security detail escorts him inside and speak to him first. Their questions are straightforward and pretty much what he had prepared for. At the end, they tell him they’d be happy to have him on the team should Finn offer him the job.

Finally, he’s directed to another room to talk to the wild card himself.

As Bellamy walks in, he passes the last candidate leaving the room looking dejected. Finn’s reclining on a gigantic couch with a glass of scotch in his hand. He’s got his ankle crossed over his knee and is staring into space, looking bored. It’s odd to see him like this, in jeans and a simple T-shirt, when Bellamy has only ever seen him looking larger than life on a big screen.

Finn sees Bellamy and seems to snap out of it, leaning forward. He grins lopsidedly, the way he’s famous for. Bellamy seems to remember teenage Clarke replaying Finn’s scenes a lot when they watched his movie _Spacewalker_ together. Bellamy had poked fun at her for it. Finn wasn’t _that_ damn attractive or charming by Bellamy’s measure, but it rather feels like the world kept telling everyone he was until they all believed it.

Finn waves him towards the couch across from him. “Finally! Finally, something interesting around here. Have a seat, Bellamy.”

Bellamy had been all prepared for a handshake and the polite _Nice to meet you_ he was going to say, but Finn speaks as if he knows him, and it throws him off. He looks around and sinks onto the couch across from Finn.

Finn pours him a glass of scotch and offers it to him. Bellamy takes it out of politeness.

“Go ahead, you can drink.” Bellamy doesn’t. Finn studies him and raises his glass to his lips. “You know, when I spoke to Eligius about needing a new bodyguard, Anya said you were the best in your cohort. By far.”

That’s news to Bellamy. Figures Anya would say nice things about him behind his back.

Finn goes on. “But you don’t get much long term work, do you? Why’s that?”

Bellamy gets the sense Finn is testing him, because he must already know the answer to that question. He answers anyway. “People recognize me sometimes because I grew up with Clarke Griffin. We spent a lot of time together back then.”

He says it without inflection. That’s the explanation he’d come up with for this inevitable question. It acknowledges their friendship in the past in a detached way while distancing himself in the present.

It’s such a fucking lie.

“People can recognize you all they like,” Finn declares. “I’m not exactly anonymous myself, so what do I care if people snap a couple pictures of you, too?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. He polishes off his scotch. “So, what do you say? Do you want the job?”

Bellamy blinks at the abrupt swerve. That’s it?

“It’s not a test,” Finn says, as if reading his mind. “Raven Reyes got you this interview. She vouched for you, too. I know you’re good. Now I just need to know if you actually want the job.”

Bellamy hesitates. “Yes.”

“Done. Congratulations, you get to ward off all my obsessed teenage fangirls.” He gives that lopsided grin again. Bellamy sort of has the feeling he’s practiced it in the mirror.

“Whatever you need,” Bellamy says eventually, biting back all snide comments he sorely wants to make.

“Well, that’s the bread and butter of it. But enough talk about business. You know, I’ve always wanted to meet your friend Clarke Griffin. I was the biggest fan of her dad when I was a kid.” He pauses, studies Bellamy. “Think you could arrange that for me?”

Bellamy’s response is automatic and flat. “No.”

It’s always no. In school, people asked him the same, and he said the same. Clarke wasn’t some party animal to parade around.

Finn blinks, clearly surprised at the rejection. Bellamy can imagine he doesn’t experience that a lot. He wonders if this will cost him his job. Fired within the first thirty seconds, that must be some kind of record.

“Good thing I don’t pay you to be nice to me,” Finn muses, sounding more amused than anything. He doesn’t fire him. He just tells him that his staff will take care of the paperwork, and that he’s going for a two-week long shoot across the country in a few days. Bellamy blinks when he hears the city they’re going to.

“Pack light,” Finn adds, and dismisses him.

He goes home after signing the papers, but Gina’s not back yet from work. He texts her a simple, _Good news_ , makes dinner, then gets to working off his energy by tackling one of their many ongoing home renovation projects, today in the bathroom of their house. The whole place was in a sorry state when they moved in together, but they’ve been slowly making it a home.

While he’s working on installing the new faucet, he calls Clarke.

He has to try twice. She usually doesn’t pick up the first time, as he’s found out. They only talk two or three times a week now. But she’s busy.

Bellamy hasn’t seen her in almost three months; not since his wedding at the beginning of May. She up and left and he didn’t know where she was until a week later. She’d told him over the phone, in a rather robotic voice, that she’d decided to go to med school and was just spending the summer away from the cameras doing clinical research with a professor at her new school.

It didn’t ring completely true to him. Sometimes he feels like despite all his efforts, he lost Clarke when he married Gina. But he told himself this was bigger than him. She was under a lot of stress, of course she was spending time away. While Clarke had disengaged from Polaris, she had been dealing with Abby’s court case—and then there’s Lexa, who kept trying to get Clarke more involved in the company again. Not to mention the ugly press coverage. It was in Clarke’s nature to avoid her emotional problems by burying herself in work, and med school was perfect for that.

But her med school is in the same damn city Finn Collins is going to film this new movie, so he’s got a duty to warn her. When she does finally pick up, he fills her in on speakerphone while he installs the faucet.

“I’m just warning you,” he says, “Because Finn Collins has gotten it into his head that he can get some acting talent by breathing the same air as Jake Griffin’s daughter.”

He hears Clarke’s amused huff over the phone line. “I can handle Finn Collins.”

“I bet you could,” Bellamy replies, unable to help himself. “Didn’t you have a poster of him in your bedroom when you were thirteen—”

“Don’t make me hang up on you.” Her playful tone becomes serious. “I’m glad you got the job. I know you haven’t gotten other jobs because of me…”

“Quit it, Clarke,” he says gruffly before she can go down that road and make him another burden on her shoulders. “I’d give up all those jobs for you.”

Her voice is quieter. “You shouldn’t.” Before he can say anything more, she says, “Finn Collins must be paying well.”

Bellamy frowns as he tightens the screws on the faucet even though her assumption is correct. The numbers on the contract had made him feel like he was doing something illegal by signing it. But he and Clarke don’t usually talk about money. She’s going somewhere with this, he just knows it. She confirms it with her next words.

“Have you thought about going back to school?”

He flinches. “Clarke. I’m almost twenty-four.”

“Oh, well that does it. There goes my argument.”

Her tone is wry. He glares even though there’s no way for her to know he’s glaring. “It’s not about that. I have to save any money I make now.” The time for dreaming is over. He’s an adult, with people to take care of. Gina. Octavia, if she ever wanted to go to school or needed anything, although she seems content where she is; she’s started working at Eligius, alongside Lincoln in his unit. And of course he has to keep some money aside for his mother.

Clarke makes an exasperated noise on the phone. “I wish just once that you would do something for yourself. You can’t use the same excuse you did when we were teenagers. You’ve got enough money now.”

That irritates him. He’s got a stable income, but it’s still not enough money to do what she’s suggesting. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Then _make_ me understand, Bellamy.” Clarke sounds frustrated. “Because right now it just sounds like being self-sacrificial has become a habit for you.” Silence. “I know you still want to go.”

The faucet comes loose again. He doesn’t have the right screwdriver. He throws the damn thing across the floor, fuming silently. If he were talking to anyone else, he might hang up.

But this is Clarke. She’s not being malicious. She genuinely just doesn’t get it. Clarke’s privilege is this: she can’t understand the need to save money. Even without Arkadia, her father’s estate is enough to keep her comfortable for several lifetimes. Clarke has the luxury of thinking about herself.

He tries to find the words but it’s very hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived it. If he had to guess just one reason why the world didn’t make them soulmates, it would probably be that.

He sinks to sit on the half-tiled floor with his phone in his hand, stretching his legs out in front of him. “If something happened to someone in my family,” he says carefully, “but I didn’t have the money to help because I spent it on a useless degree, I’d never forgive myself. At least right now, I have a good job. I’m not giving that up.”

A silence, and then Clarke speaks again, sounding sad, and that’s how he knows she’s truly trying to understand. “But you won’t be happy.”

“I’m happy knowing I have a fund for rainy days.”

“I wish you didn’t need a fund for rainy days. I wish you could have a fund for sunny days, instead.”

He half-smiles despite himself. “A sunny day fund, Clarke? You want to explain what the hell you’re talking about?”

“I’m definitely hanging up on you now,” she says, but he hears the grin in her voice. As if on cue, Bellamy hears the front door open.

“That’s Gina,” he says. “Want to talk to her?”

The way Clarke’s voice changes at the mention of her name might be comical in another situation. “Oh, I wish I could,” she replies, with a false brightness. “You go and tell her the good news. I—I’ve got some work to catch up on. The next few days are going to be really busy.”

That sounds like a hint not to call her. “Alright. Good night.”

Clarke disconnects, and Bellamy sighs, deflated.

He gets off the floor when he hears Gina’s footsteps in the hall, and goes to greet her.

His smile vanishes when he sees the paleness of her face, the bags under her eyes. She looks at him a little bleakly, and he understands instantly that today was not a good day. He abandons his plans of telling her about the job, the pay, and the champagne he’d taken out in the hopes they might celebrate tonight.

He hugs her, asks her to tell him what happened. Someone died, she murmurs, her arms around him. And when her hands creep to other places, Bellamy stops talking.

In their bedroom, he tries his best to make it better, in the only way he knows he’s good for. It works, temporarily. Her eyes brighten with lust for a time. But after she stops moaning his name and he crawls his way back up her body, her eyes dull again, and he feels the crushing weight of failure on his shoulders. Even as a soulmate he’s not enough.

—

Gina’s in a somber mood for several days. Bellamy lets her be, and then it’s time for Finn Collins’ trip.

He hates to leave her like this, but this is a job both of them wanted him to get. He can’t abandon it now. He bids her goodbye, and goes to board a private jet with Finn Collins.

—

There’s a designated area on the plane for the security detail, but Finn pats the seat beside him and declares that he wants to get to know his new bodyguard.

Bellamy braces himself for questions about Clarke, but surprisingly, Finn wants to know about _him_. Where he’s from, what his family’s like, what got him into Eligius.

Bellamy answers his questions, then figures since telling Finn Collins his life story is not in the job description, he’s entitled to some answers too. So he asks.

Finn shrugs, unbothered, and tells him how he grew up a child actor. That he knows Raven from way back, that they always helped each other out, that her mom wasn’t around growing up and neither was his dad, so they sort of depended on each other, and became friends through struggle.

The story sounds eerily familiar. Bellamy automatically glances at Finn’s arm, suddenly curious. Both his wrists are blank.

“Makeup,” Finn explains. “Too many people knowing an actor’s soulmark is a pain in the ass. Fangirls crop up pretending they’re your soulmate as an excuse to come talk to you.” He shrugs at Bellamy’s questioning look. “That’s what happened to Jake Griffin, you know, until he met Abby. I figured it would be better to keep it under wraps. But no, Raven’s not my soulmate if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“So what’s your soulmark?” Bellamy can’t help but ask.

Finn winks and stretches his arms over his head. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

The intercom turns on to inform them they’re about to hit some turbulence and to put seatbelts on. Finn doesn’t. He just yawns and asks, “You soulmated?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Bellamy says, and Finn grins.

“Touché. But I can see you’re married.”

Bellamy runs his thumb over his wedding band automatically.

“So you’re either married to your soulmate, in which case you’re lucky,” Finn goes on, “Or you’re married to someone else, in which case you’re stupid.”

Bellamy is silent.

“No need to look so offended,” Finn says with a snort, pouring himself some champagne. “We all do stupid things with people who aren’t our soulmate.”

—

They land a few hours later. Somehow, there is a crowd of fans already waiting at the hotel. How people get intel so fast, Bellamy will never know.

Finn informs his bodyguards he’s not doing autographs today, so Bellamy gets to do his job. He blocks a few of Finn’s so-called obsessed teenage fangirls from getting too close to him. They plead with him when he says, “Sorry, Mr. Collins isn’t doing autographs today,” like that’s going to change his decision. He sort of wants to tell them he’s doing them a favour, but Finn’s tolerance for insults can only go so far.

But then Finn, all jovial from behind him, says, “No, let them through, Bellamy. Don’t be such a buzzkill.”

Bellamy turns around, eyebrows raised, but lets the excited girls through. As Finn signs a T-shirt, a forehead, and a phone case, one of the other bodyguards rolls her eyes.

Bellamy sees what’s going on. By making his bodyguards the bad guys, Finn gets to be the hero saving the day for them. No skin off Bellamy’s back, though. If Finn wants to pay him to be the bad guy, the bad guy he will be.

—

There’s a lot more logistics with Finn’s hectic shooting schedule, and Bellamy barely has time to think or eat for several days.

At one point, Finn disappears from set without telling anyone, and Bellamy panics slightly until one of the other bodyguards tells him, “Don’t worry. He does this a lot, gives us the slip just for fun. We just let him do it. Get his kicks in.”

“What if something happens to him while he’s gone?” Bellamy asks. Officially they’re still on the job even if they’re entertaining him. And they have to answer to Eligius at the end of the day.

“That’s what the tracer we put in his shoe is for.”

Bellamy snorts. Finn does come back eventually, wearing a cocky grin on his face, as if he’d gone somewhere dangerous and exciting even though everyone knows he actually just went to Trader Joe’s.

Then on Finn’s day off from shooting, he announces he’s going to a party with some of his actor friends. He won’t need his whole detail, as there will already be security there. But he says he still wants one of his guards with him.

He points at Bellamy. “You. New guy. You can come with me.”

Lucky him.

Bellamy doesn’t think much of it. At least until he’s there, at a party in yet another disgustingly opulent mansion with a jaw dropping list of A-listers, and Clarke appears out of nowhere.

She’s in a floral, gauzy strapless sundress, her hair down in waves. She doesn’t see him and Finn at first, so he gets to study her unabashedly. She looks like she’s lost weight, and there are bags under her eyes. She doesn’t look quite comfortable with the way she’s standing as she talks to one of the partygoers. Her smiles are too brief, her shoulders stiff. At least until she turns and locks eyes with Bellamy.

Her lips part. She stills, her hands running over the front of her dress. She doesn’t look _exactly_ glad to see him, but still, his heart lifts. He hasn’t felt the weight of her gaze in such a long time. It makes his heart settle. There’s something about being _seen_ by her; something about knowing she’s aware of his every flaw and mistake, and still looking at him like that. He’d forgotten what that felt like.

He’s so enraptured that he almost forgets Finn is even there, at least until he says, “Thanks for agreeing to come, princess. Although it honestly looks like you’re happier to see my bodyguard.”

Clarke’s eyes shift to Finn’s with a flicker of annoyance. Bellamy’s rather glad suddenly that she agreed to come to this party, because otherwise he wouldn’t have had a chance to see her while he was here. Maybe that’s even _why_ she agreed.

But no. That’s stupid, especially since she’s the one who’s been more distant lately.

“I haven’t seen him in a long time,” Clarke says, and takes a step towards him. Bellamy knows he shouldn’t break professionalism the way he wants to and hug her, but he still itches to do it. He hopes Clarke will so he won’t have to.

She doesn’t, though. She just rocks back on her heels. “You look good,” she tells him softly, and he somehow hears her over thumping music.

He knows she’s talking about his well-being, not his superficial appearance, and wishes he could tell her the same. But she doesn’t look well, not at all.

This isn’t the place to ask. Painfully aware of eyes on them, he says, “Good to see you, Clarke,” and the words feel stupid and foreign. This isn’t who they _are_. They don’t normally talk like this, as though they’re acquaintances who only catch up when they run into each other by coincidence. As if they hadn’t had a very long phone call just a few days ago. It rather feels like they’re putting on a production.

Maybe it was a good production, because Finn turns to Bellamy. “You look bored. Why don’t you go with the other security people?”

He would’ve welcomed this suggestion a minute ago, before he saw Clarke. But now he wills Clarke to say he can stay. If she says that, then Finn can’t send him away.

But she doesn’t, and so he leaves, slinking off to the perimeter of the room.

Roan’s there, too, his arms crossed. Bellamy goes to stand next to him because he’s chosen the perfect dark alcove to people-watch from. They exchange mutual looks of disdain, which is their usual method of saying hello, and then resume watching their principals. There’s not much else to do in here, not when the whole team is surrounding the building and looking for outside threats.

Clarke’s got her arms crossed, body language closed off. But Finn—he’s got his flirty, movie-worthy smile out as he talks to her, and at several points, he touches her shoulder as he talks. It kind of pisses Bellamy off.

“Careful or you might kill your own principal,” Roan says offhandedly, and Bellamy blinks, realizing he’d been glaring.

“Why are you watching _me_? Maybe I should tell Clarke what a shit bodyguard you are.”

“I think she likes the way I operate. She’s kept me around six years.”

Bellamy scowls. “That’s the real mystery.” Clarke hadn’t liked Roan on day one, but she’d changed her mind very quickly, and he’s never been able to figure out exactly why.

Roan seems very amused by this comment for some reason. “Let’s just say we sorted out our differences.”

—

Clarke calls him later, when he’s off-duty and getting ready for bed in his hotel room.

“I’m sorry we didn’t talk more at the party,” she says anxiously. “It caught me off guard. You just seemed… so serious. You were working. I didn’t know how I was supposed to act.”

He gets it. This is the first time she would have seen him working. Their different roles in life had never been more starkly apparent and uncomfortable. “What did Finn want?”

“He didn’t want anything. Just to talk.”

 _And get in your pants_ , Bellamy thinks. But he bites that comment back because he’s pretty sure that’s his irrational side talking. Besides, there’s no real reason why he should warn her off. His own personal feelings for the guy don’t have any basis. “Was he about what you expected?”

She seems to mull this over. “He was more down to earth than I thought he’d be.”

This time he can’t help himself. “You have got to be joking.”

“I’m serious. For all the awards and films and attention, he’s not as stuck up as I thought he’d be. A little obnoxious, sure, but not unbearably.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Bellamy,” she teases. “I’m starting to think you’re not a fan of Finn Collins.”

“Now where would you get that idea?” He glances at the clock. It’s nearly one in the morning. Finn’s got to be at the hair and makeup trailer on set by six. He doesn’t want to say goodbye, though. Not when Clarke sounds this relaxed and lighthearted on the phone.

In the end, it’s Clarke who ends it, as it usually is nowadays. “I should probably go,” she says in a crisp voice. This happens a lot; they’ll be easing back into the way they used to be, and then she’ll snap them out of it, like being friends with him is a mistake she keeps making. “I don’t want to keep you from calling Gina.”

“Clarke, I’m not calling her, it’s the middle of the night. She’s at work.”

“Then you need to rest.” Her voice is firm, and she’s insistent when she bids him goodbye, so he lets her slide away from him yet again.

—

Finn’s work trip wraps up quickly, and an exhausted Bellamy finally gets to come home for a day to recoup.

Gina’s waiting for him on the front steps when he drives up. She bounds up and wraps her arms around him in a hug. “I missed you,” she whispers. “I’m sorry I wasn’t all there when you left.”

He hugs her back, because he gets it. He gets the way guilt weighs a person down. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“I got you something while you were gone,” Gina says. She takes his hand and leads him inside. She brings him to the kitchen table, and lying there is a book. She picks it up and presses it into his hands. He looks down. It’s a worn, leather bound book, the collector’s kind you wouldn’t find anywhere anymore. _The Iliad_.

“I found it in a second-hand bookstore,” she says. “I remember you told me your mom used to read you stories like this.”

He stares down at the book. It’s such a thoughtful gift. He’s already thinking of bringing it with him on Finn’s next trip to re-read during breaks. So why does it make his chest ache?

He knows why. Because of his conversation with Clarke a while back. Because if he had the chance, he would go back to school, and he wouldn’t just read during breaks. He would read all the time. And he would go to classes and read some more, and he would read until he got sick of readings and complained about it while secretly revelling in the fact that he was _there_ , that he was going to school, that he was actually getting to do this.

He hates the way Clarke reminded him of this fantasy. He hates Clarke’s ability to make him dream, to make him want things for himself. It just makes it more painful to come back to reality.

“Do you like it?” Gina asks at his silence.

Her voice startles him back to reality. She sounds a little uncertain, worried even, as if she might’ve done the wrong thing. “Course I do. Thank you,” he replies, and puts the book aside to kiss her well enough to make her forget his expression.

—

Several months pass. Bellamy settles into his new work, which involves a lot of travel. He makes sure to make it up to Gina whenever he’s gone for a long time. But, she doesn’t seem to mind.

“Sometimes when you’re not around, I look up Finn Collins on gossip sites,” she tells him one morning in bed. At his scandalized look she starts laughing. “Not to look at _him_ , silly. The paparazzi usually get you in their pictures too. And then I get to look at you and not miss you as much.”

His heart grows about ten times bigger at the softness in her voice. What she sees in him, he still doesn’t know. But he’s glad it makes her smile.

Meanwhile, Clarke is deep in her first semester of med school, and they talk even less now. He misses her, but he doesn’t dare call her more than once a week. He doesn’t want to become overbearing and make her push him away even further.

One morning, he’s getting ready for work—Finn’s got a movie premiere tonight, which guarantees some action—and Gina comes up behind him, wrapping her arms around his middle.

He relaxes back into her. She kisses her cheek, and he closes his eyes to it, at least until she says, “We’ve never talked about having children.”

His eyes fly open. He disengages carefully and turns around in her arms. “Where is this coming from?”

“Nowhere. We just never talked about it. And I want to. Do you?”

Bellamy hesitates. They’ve been together for years. Married for over half a year. He supposes it had to come up sooner rather than later. And he’d be lying if he said half the reason he was saving his money wasn’t for _that_.

Gina takes his hand. “You’d make such a good father. You’ve got a way with children.”

He thinks back to his teenage years. He and Octavia clashed a lot then as he tried to stop her from doing stupid teenage things, and Clarke had poked fun at him for acting like a dad. Octavia had made the comparison too. He vividly remembers her screaming at him once. _You’re not my father! And if you were you’d be a shit one_!

He can’t help but release a half-laugh as he rubs his face. “I’m not so sure.”

Gina clearly wasn’t prepared for his hesitation. She blinks, her smile fading a bit. “Okay, well.” She kisses his cheek again. “Just think about it. We have lots of time.”

—

And he does think about it, the whole day at work. Him. A parent. With _Gina_.

The thought scares him shitless and it’s not just because of his track record with Octavia.

He’s still trying to puzzle out exactly what it is in the limo to the premiere, sitting across from Finn, who’s all decked out tonight in an expensive tuxedo, his hair carefully styled, scrolling through his phone. Bellamy’s only distracted from his thoughts when Finn says, “Whoa, Clarke’s mom is going to prison after all?”

Bellamy must look shocked, because Finn adds, “I just saw the news.” He holds up his phone.

Abandoning decorum, Bellamy grabs it out of his hand to take a closer look. His stomach drops. _Five years_. Clarke’s mom is going away for five years. She must be devastated.

“Note to self,” Finn says. “Hotshot lawyers can’t get me out of _everything_.” He chuckles. Bellamy kinda wants to deck him, at least until he becomes serious again. “Shitty situation. I hope Clarke’s doing okay.”

Bellamy hands his phone back, eyeing him. He makes it sound like he knows her well. He makes it sound like he cares about her.

“She gave me her number. We talk sometimes,” Finn explains, then pauses to shoot him a winning grin. “Not everyone hates me as much as you do, Bellamy.”

—

Bellamy gets home that night quite late. It’s two in the morning, and the house is dark. He sits in the kitchen and boils water for tea and debates calling Clarke now. She’s probably lying awake with her thoughts.

He finds himself pulling out his phone. If she doesn’t want to talk to him, she won’t pick up. It won’t hurt to call.

Just before he can, though, Gina’s voice behind him makes him jump.

“I heard about Clarke’s mother.”

He turns in his chair. Gina’s standing behind him, in her uniform.

“Gina,” he says, feeling guilty inexplicably. “I thought you had a night shift.”

“I do. It’s been a slow night at the station, so I thought I’d drop by to pick up something to do.” She holds up a book and studies him, her eyes soft. “Are you going to call Clarke?”

He nods. “You wanna stay for it?” He always invites her to stay, to come with him, to be around when he’s around Clarke. Just in case she wants to. She never has taken him up on it, not once.

Gina is silent. “You’ve been working seventeen hours. Couldn’t you call after you got some sleep?”

He _is_ very tired. There were plenty of overzealous fans to manhandle who were trying to get at Finn during the premiere. And he could probably fall asleep right here. But not before he tries to reach Clarke.

GIna seems to parse that out without him saying a word. She purses her lips, like she’s biting words back, but then she takes a breath.

“You always go running to her. Do you think she would do the same for you?”

He can’t speak. Because he doesn’t know anymore. But also because he didn’t expect Gina to say that. In all their years of being together, she’s never said a word against Clarke.

Gina hugs herself. “I just worry about you sometimes.”

“Gina.”

“No. We need to have this conversation. Clarke can’t be your first priority forever, Bellamy.”

He stares up at her, pleading desperately and silently for her not to start this. “You told me,” he says, nearly choking on the words, “when we first met, you said I wouldn’t have to choose.”

“Not between me and her. But you’re still going to have to choose. Her, or your family.” Gina drifts closer. “If we had children, they’d have to come first. Before anything or anyone else. You know that, right?”

He’s bewildered. “Of course I do. And they would.” He means it without a doubt. He would be all in.

“But would you resent me for it?”

“Why would I resent you?” She’s silent. He rises from his chair to take her shoulders. “What does that mean?”

Gina takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“It means I think you can’t help it that Clarke’s got a part of your soul. A part I can’t touch, even with this.” She holds up her wrist, and her crown tattoo. “And I think the reason you’re afraid to have children with me is because it will take you away from her. Tell me I’m wrong.”

He can’t.

She walks out.

He follows. “Gina—”

“I have to go, Bellamy. I have work.” Her voice, even after all that, is still gentle, and that’s what is most devastating. When she turns to look at him her eyes are full of unshed tears instead of hatred like he deserves. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She leaves him on the front step, staring helplessly after her.

—

He doesn’t end up calling Clarke. He crawls into bed and tries desperately to think of anything but her. But he can’t.

She’s in his head, in his heart, in his soul. The impact she’s had on his life is something he’s not sure he could ever explain to anyone. Loving her is as natural as breathing. Just as vital too.

And he knows he’s a horrible husband for that.

—

The next morning Bellamy only wakes up because his phone is ringing. And ringing. And ringing. Groggy-eyed, he fumbles around on the bedside table for it. It’s Gina’s cell.

He brings it to his ear. “Gina, I’m—”

“Bellamy?” He freezes, halfway to sitting position, because the voice on the other end is not Gina. It’s someone else. It’s one of her coworkers at the fire station. Why is one of Gina’s co-workers using her phone?

Something is very wrong.

When he doesn’t answer, the voice on the other end says, “Bellamy, are you there?”

He swallows. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I’m here.”

“Bellamy, I’m very sorry.” A pause. The voice is soft, and sad. “You might want to sit down for this…”

—

Clarke is having the worst sort of morning.

First, she got chewed out in one of her clinical sessions for not doing the reading, although in all fairness she’d done the _wrong_ reading. She was distracted, and cried out after talking to her mom, and just emotionally exhausted. Her mom’s got five years in prison. Dr. Singh’s got twenty, because she orchestrated the whole thing. But still. _Five years_.

Clarke waited for Bellamy to call her all night. He didn’t, and she cried some more, because once upon a time he would’ve, and then she forces herself to stop crying because this distance is exactly what she’d tried to build, so she can’t complain about it.

Then, during lunch she went to the grocery store with Roan, and picked up a tabloid because she is a masochist apparently. People were speculating about how she’s _cracking under the stress_ and _sources close to Clarke tell us she’s been experimenting with hard drugs_ but _at least she’s lost weight! She looks great!_

It’s such garbage. She wonders who would’ve told them she was doing drugs. Which she isn’t, by the way. At least not since that one time with Niylah months and months ago, when it was her father’s birthday and she was remembering their tradition of going out for ice cream together on birthdays. Once upon a time she’d have talked to Bellamy about it but, well, Bellamy was recently married and she didn’t want to bother him—

She doubts Niylah would’ve told the press anything. Niylah’s a pot-smoking girl who sells canned jam and paintings out of her trailer and is fully content to live alone on the edge of the forest forever. She doesn’t seem the type to run to the media. But what does Clarke know? They’re just fuck buddies.

As if her day wasn’t already ruined, when she returns to the university to study for a bit before her next small group session, she finds Lexa Woods herself sitting in the atrium of the medical building.

“What are you doing here?” Clarke asks dully.

“I have business in town. I thought I’d come see you while I was here.” Lexa clasps her hands on the table.

Clarke doesn’t bother to ask how Lexa knows she comes here to study. If there’s one thing Lexa is good at, it’s getting intel.

“Clarke, I still want you to be part of the company.”

Clarke laughs a little hysterically. “I’m not talking to you.”

“Yes, you are. You want to hear what I have to say. I was sorry to hear about your mother.”

Clarke grips the edge of her book rather hard. Roan shifts closer; not, she knows, to protect her, but to protect her from doing something stupid.

“I really was,” Lexa goes on. “I called her to see how she was doing. I’m going to do everything in my power to help her.”

Clarke’s well aware of this offer. Abby had told Clarke as much over the phone. “We don’t need your help.”

“Please, Clarke.” Lexa’s green eyes are wide, earnest, and Clarke hates that she looks so remorseful. What gives her the right to plead with Clarke after what she’d done? “Tell me what it will take for you to forgive me.”

“Hell freezing over. Now leave.”

Lexa stands her ground. “Clarke, I know we’re not soulmates, but—”

“Yes, I’m very aware now that we weren’t even close to soulmates.”

“—it doesn’t change the way I feel. I regret what I did. If I could do it over, I wouldn’t have done it, even if it meant losing Polaris. I’ve realized now that the company’s not as important… not as important as you.”

The silence between them is loud.

“You should’ve realized it before,” Clarke snaps. She doesn’t want to risk getting her heart and soul broken again. It’s not worth it. The universe told her that quite clearly when it put a second soulmark on her wrist, but she’d ignored the warning. She won’t make that mistake again. Even if she still doesn’t understand the purpose behind it all.

Lexa seems to grasp that Clarke’s not budging. She nods slowly, and gets up to leave, but then Clarke is struck with a sudden thought.

“There’s one thing you could do for me.” Lexa turns around. Clarke crosses her arms. “Give me Dr. Singh’s old lab. The soulmarks research. All of it you can get your hands on that the court case left behind.”

Lexa seems startled. Clarke has startled herself by asking. But the thing is, she still can’t let it go. What she knows about Dr. Singh’s old research from reading articles had intrigued her. More than anything, Clarke just wants _answers_. She wants to understand why the universe did this. She wants to understand why some people get second soulmarks and others don’t. She just cannot roll over and accept fate without trying to figure it out first.

And maybe that would give her some peace.

Lexa blinks slowly. “And if I do that, you’ll forgive me?”

“No,” Clarke says, and picks up her books to find a new place to study. “But I’ll stop planning my revenge.”

—

The next few days are uneventful, or about as uneventful as Clarke’s life gets. She goes to her classes and doesn’t socialize with anyone, just comes home and studies, or at least tries to. Her phone blows up more than usual. Everyone is trying to check in on her to see if she’s okay. She always checks who’s calling, but she never picks up. She’s still waiting for one person to call.

Then one day she gets a call from someone unexpected—Bellamy’s _sister_. Clarke stares at the phone and debates whether to answer. If Octavia is yet another person calling to offer condolences, she’s not interested. But then again, that really doesn’t sound like something Octavia would do. So there’s got to be some other reason she’s calling—

Clarke snatches up the phone so fast she startles herself. “Hello?”

“Was beginning to wonder if you’d ever pick up,” Octavia says. “Well? Did you hear?”

Her words are curt, angry. Clarke rubs her eyes. “Hear about what?”

Octavia’s voice becomes distant, like she’s removed the phone from her ear to talk to someone else in the room. “She doesn’t even _know_ , Mom.”

Clarke frowns. Octavia’s back in town with Aurora? What on earth could make Octavia come back?

Octavia comes back on the phone. Clarke asks, “What is it that I don’t know?”

A thick pause. Then, in typical blunt Octavia fashion: “Gina’s dead, Clarke.”

Clarke wonders if she heard her right. That cannot be true. She did not hear that. “What?”

“Gina _died_.”

Maybe this is a dream. Clarke still cannot completely grasp this idea, that Bellamy’s soulmate died. It can’t be true. She wants so badly for it not to be true, for his sake.

Octavia keeps going. “She died on the job a week ago and my brother is acting insane.”

“What’s he doing?” Clarke whispers, dreading the answer.

“He’s doing the _same_ things, Clarke! That’s the problem! He goes to work like everything’s fine and comes home and does nothing, then gets up and does it all over the next day. He won’t talk about it to anybody but I know he’s not eating or sleeping.”

“Why didn’t—why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“Well, I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” Octavia snaps. “I told him he was being stupid, and then I threatened to call you and get you back in town and force him to talk to somebody. He got mad at me, told me I shouldn’t _dare_ put something else on your plate, so. I figured that was a good sign that I should.”

As Octavia speaks, Clarke is already ripping shirts off their hangers and throwing them haphazardly into a suitcase. “I’m glad you told me.”

“Yeah, well.” Octavia still sounds pissed, but Clarke’s known her long enough to know that’s how Octavia gets when she’s sad. “You could _at least_ call him. I know you’re studying to be a hotshot doctor or whatever, but my brother could use a five minute phone call, if you can _spare_ it these days.”

Clarke digs her teeth into her bottom lip for a second and then says, in a measured voice, “Of course I can. He’s my best friend.”

“So prove it,” Octavia replies. And hangs up.

—

Clarke goes to her program directors and tells them she needs time off. Things are difficult with her mom, she tells them. With everything going on with the company, the stress is getting to be too much. Thankfully, they’re understanding. She gets a month off, and if she needs more, she’s told quietly, she could take a year, and pick up where she left off as part of the incoming class.

She calls Bellamy. He never answers, although she leaves plenty of messages.

Clarke gets on a plane back home. The trip was a long time coming, anyway; she needs to see her mother, make sure she’s okay. And Kane, if he needs any help with managing the Arkadia subsidiary. Although Clarke has no desire to be involved with the company anymore, she knows it’s still her duty to an extent.

As soon as she lands, she calls Bellamy again. Again, no answer. Well, that won’t stop her. She knows where he lives.

Unfortunately, some people spot her at the airport despite her gigantic sunglasses, and come up asking for photos. Roan steps in front of them, shaking his head, but they point their phones at her anyway. Clarke’s certain everyone on the internet will know she’s back in her home city soon enough.

“Make sure we aren’t followed before you start going to Bellamy’s house,” she instructs Roan in the car. He’s done a good job sinking back into relative anonymity for the few years they’ve been separated, and she doesn’t want to ruin that. Roan nods.

On the way, Clarke calls Aurora and tries to get more details about what happened. From the sounds of it, Bellamy had gotten into a fight with Gina before she left for work, although no one seems to know what the fight had been about. Gina and her team had been called in for a fire that had seemed manageable at first but spiralled out of control. There were children in the building, and against advice Gina had gone in to make sure there were no others.

She had dragged out another child before collapsing, and later died from smoke inhalation.

It’s tragic. Gina died a hero. And Clarke just knows in her bones from hearing that story that Bellamy’s blaming himself for it somehow.

In any case, it sounds like Gina’s best friend is arranging the funeral, and Bellamy’s paying for it all. That’s happening in a week’s time.

Eventually, Roan pulls into the driveway of their little house. It’s a decently old place, built thirty-something years ago on a narrow street where the trees on peoples’ front lawns are so old and big that they tangle with each other’s branches from across the road, causing a canopy effect. Bellamy and Gina’s tree is the prettiest one, by Clarke’s measure.

The Rover’s in the driveway, too. Bellamy’s in there.

Clarke jumps out of the car before Roan’s even turned off the engine, runs up the front steps, and rings the doorbell. She strains her ears. She doesn’t hear a thing. She rings it again, and again and again, enough to be irritating.

She gives up on the doorbell after a while and knocks instead. “Hey!” she yells. “Open up.” She bangs on the door a few more times. No dice.

She calls him again. Hopefully she can annoy him enough that he’ll come out just to bite her head off. But again, it goes straight to voicemail. It’s worrying. She chews her lip.

She presses her face against the window in the storm door because she’s nosy like that. His boots are lined up carefully on the mat, his jacket hung up on a hook. A pair of Gina’s shoes have been lined up right next to his—not her work boots, because those are the ones she died in—but some pair of tennis shoes that he must’ve put there. For denial’s sake.

Clarke shakes her head. Bellamy is not budging, not tonight anyway. She pulls out her phone as she walks back to Roan’s car. She’s got a new idea.

—

A day after Clarke shows up at his house and then leaves, Bellamy gets dragged along with Finn for a few days’ trip to Dubai for some business, or for a photoshoot, or something. Bellamy barely pays attention. He’s just going through the motions.

If he slows down, he’ll break, and he just—he can’t. He’s paying for the funeral, so he may as well make some money while he can. He’s very glad he was saving for that rainy day fund. This is about as rainy as it gets.

So he keeps working, and getting people out of Finn’s face so he can do his business, and he does it all completely numbly. Finn has no idea, of course. Finn only knows Bellamy’s requested a few days off when they get back. He doesn’t know it’s for his wife’s funeral.

Even thinking about it makes him want to lie down in bed and never get up again. Which is, of course, why he refuses to sleep there anymore. He keeps replaying their last conversation in his head. He keeps seeing the tears in her eyes when she left. He keeps thinking about how she was trying to save children when she died.

“I’m free from work until one this afternoon,” Finn announces as they stride through the foyer of the opulent hotel they’re staying in.

Bellamy raises an eyebrow. Finn is wearing a tailored designer suit and spent half an hour on his hair this morning. None of the other bodyguards ask, so Bellamy does. “Then where are we going?”

“I have a lunch date.” Finn flashes his trademark grin. Of course. Finn’s ability to pick up girls in any city he goes to is just another mystery Bellamy can’t figure out.

On the way, the whole guard detail puts their heads together and assesses the restaurant Finn’s chosen. Exits, possible threats, good vantage points. Bellamy’s assigned the main corridor to guard. Now that Finn’s gotten over the novelty of a new bodyguard, they rotate through who’s going to stay next to him in situations such as these.

He settles in there, leaning against the wall and waiting for Finn’s guest to arrive. His earpiece buzzes with a voice. “She’s here. Headed your way.”

He pushes off the wall, clasps his hands in front of him, prepared to politely invite Finn’s guest in. But his stoicism drains out of him when the door opens and someone lets Clarke in.

His jaw drops a little. He’s just not prepared to see her, yet again. He hasn’t seen her since that A-lister party in the summer. She’s wearing a sleeveless green sundress that hugs her body, her hair down and curled around her face, makeup on. It still doesn’t hide the tiredness in her features. But what the hell is Clarke doing here? And more so, what is she doing on a date with _Finn Collins_?

Clarke looks him up and down, her eyes catching on certain details; and Bellamy wishes he’d forced himself to shave today, or thought to iron the stray wrinkle in his shirt, or polish his shoes or take even the most cursory look at his hair—and he would’ve, if he’d known he was going to see Clarke today. But instead Clarke is standing here and silently cataloguing every small thing about his appearance that tells her something about him he doesn’t want her to know.

Then she frowns. “You’re not coming in with me?”

Bellamy is afraid to speak. When he doesn’t answer, Clarke’s eyes shift past him, into the dining room. She raises her voice.

“Finn, why’s Bellamy out here?”

“I don’t know,” Finn calls back from inside, sounding confused. “You’d have to ask my chief of security.”

“Well,” Clarke says, “Give me a minute.” She slides the door shut without waiting for an answer and faces Bellamy. They’re alone in this particular corridor, and Bellamy suddenly understands everything in a heartbeat.

He’s angry. “Don’t tell me you came all the way to Dubai for a date with Finn Collins, just to talk to _me_.”

“Well, you didn’t give me much choice.” The set of her jaw is defiant. “Next time, open the door when I knock.”

“You’re out of your damn mind, you know that?”

“This was the only way I could check in on you before the funeral.”

He inhales sharply. She tilts her head, stepping closer, and the scent of her perfume washes over him. The heat of her body, close to his. This corridor doesn’t feel big enough for the two of them.

“How _are_ you doing?” she asks softly.

“I’m fine.”

“Really? Because _I_ definitely wasn’t fine when my soulmate died.”

His eyes are burning; he blinks it back. He can’t do this with her. Not when he’s now certain that his love for Clarke is what got Gina killed. “Finn’s waiting for you in there.”

Then she reaches for him. A hand on his arm. “I’m not leaving until you agree to let me in when you go back home.”

“No.”

“Bellamy.”

“I don’t need you anymore,” he snaps, and watches her flinch. It hurts him, too, and he sort of likes that, in a twisted way. He likes confirming to himself that he’s a horrible person. In the same league as the men who beat his mother, if not worse. “I don’t want you around. Now go enjoy your date with Spacewalker and leave me alone.”

She absorbs that, the vitriol he packs into every word, and then looks up at him even softer.

For fuck’s sake, he thinks despairingly. How does she always _know_? He can’t keep up the angry facade for long enough. He feels it crumbling, and she simply puts her hand on his jaw when it starts to, when he can feel tears again burning at his eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she says gently. “Gina was… she was one of a kind. In more ways than one.”

He feels his shoulders shudder without cause. He takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut for a second. “Please, Clarke. Not here.”

He doesn’t know what exactly he’s begging for. The longer she gazes at him with those big, blue, understanding eyes, the faster he loses control.

“I won’t,” Clarke says after a second. “But promise me we’ll do it when we get home.”

He grinds his teeth. She _wants_ to unravel him. She wants to examine him and figure out what he’s feeling. No way is he letting her do that.

She goes on, voice steely. “I’m going to stay until you do. My faculty gave me a month off. But if you keep being stubborn, then I guess I’ll just have to stay longer. I’ll give up my seat in the class.”

He glares at her. Her gaze is unwavering, resolute. He has a feeling she’d do it, too. She would leave her new career, drop out, just to spite him if he doesn’t relent.

He can’t let her give that up. “Fine,” he snaps, and her eyes flash with triumph. “You and I come home after this, we have it out. Then you go back to school.”

She nods. Bellamy stiffly opens the door for her again. She steps through.

He pushes it shut a little harder than he needs to.

He spends the next hour leaning against the door, straining his ears. But it’s hard to understand any conversation. He hears them talking, but their voices are indistinct.

He definitely hears Clarke laugh at one point, though. A really loud laugh. He wracks his brain, trying to think of a time he’s made her laugh just like that. He can’t think of one.

Then it’s over and he hastily gets back in position as Clarke comes through the door with Finn. She pauses at his side. “I’ll see you later, Bellamy.”

It hangs in the air like a threat. Finn looks between them like he really wants to understand what the hell is going on with them. Bellamy would like to know that as well.

“Yes, you will,” he says curtly, because he knows she’s not going to leave until she has final confirmation that he’s agreed to her deal.

She smiles and brushes out the door with Finn, leaving him with only the lingering scent of her perfume.

—

As he hears from Finn later, Clarke took a plane right back home after their date.

“I’m not an idiot,” Finn says. “I know she came to talk to you. She basically told me, but even if she hadn’t, it was obvious.”

His eyes are on Bellamy, curious. No doubt wondering why Clarke flew to a different country to go on a date just so she could talk to her friend. Bellamy remains tight-lipped, and eventually Finn gives up trying to get answers from him.

They fly back home eventually, and Bellamy finally has his time off.

Of course, it’s not really time off; it’s time for Gina’s funeral in two days. He spends the first day with Gina’s firefighter best friend, helping her with last minute arrangements with the funeral parlour and guests. When they’re done and she’s escorting him out, she quietly tells him Gina talked about him at work all the time.

“She really adored you,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder. Bellamy thinks she’s trying to be comforting. Instead, the guilt that overtakes him nearly makes him cry.

He doesn’t, though. He just tells her to send him all the bills.

The next day he has no obligations whatsoever. It’s the day before the funeral and he fully intends to spend it inside the house, alone, doing nothing. He’d told his mother and sister as much.

Except around noon he spots Clarke walk up the driveway, and he remembers his promise to her. He heads to the door with an air of defeat, trying to mentally prepare for her interrogation about what happened that night—because he hasn’t told a soul.

But that’s not what happens at all. As soon as he opens the door she just walks up to him and hugs him, hard.

It startles him, how tight she clings to him. Then he wraps his arms back around her, lets himself cling to her, too. He doesn’t give a damn that the front door is still open, that Roan can see them clearly from the view of the town car. He doesn’t give a damn about anything today.

They stay like that in the front foyer for god knows how long. It’s a car alarm down the street that jars them out of it eventually. Clarke turns to wave a pointed goodbye to Roan, who seems to hesitate before getting back in the car. Bellamy closes the front door to lead her inside.

She dumps her purse on the table, and pulls out of it a box of teabags. “Sit down,” she orders him, and he does, sinking into a hard-backed chair in the small kitchen. “No,” she says. “Not there. _There_.” She nods her chin at the couch in the adjoining living room.

He does. He hears her put on water for tea. A few minutes later, she joins him with two mugs. They sip in silence. Bellamy waits for her to talk. But she doesn’t; Clarke turns on the TV, to the History channel, which is playing some documentary he’s already seen before. But he watches it again. He lets himself sink into it for a while.

As they watch, somehow he finds himself leaning into Clarke’s side, and she draws his head onto her shoulder, wrapping her arm around him.

They stay like that long after the documentary is over, and the next one has begun. Rain patters against the windows. It lulls him. He dozes off.

When he wakes, it’s because she was trying to get up. “Sorry,” she whispers. The living room is darkened; it’s late. “I just have to go to the bathroom.”

It’s the first words either of them have uttered in hours. He looks at the clock.

“You should get some sleep for tomorrow,” she adds.

He nods woodenly.

“I’ll go,” she says. “I just have to call Roan.”

“Alright.”

A pause. “Or I could stay.”

“Yes,” he agrees instantly. He suddenly can’t stand the idea of being alone with his thoughts tonight.

Clarke tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, her eyes warm with understanding, and nods. He directs her to the master bedroom bathroom, since the ordinary bathroom’s plumbing still isn’t working. Bellamy no longer has the heart to finish the renovations he had started with Gina.

When Clarke comes out, he’s got the guest bedroom made up. They both stare at the bed. Bellamy dimly remembers when he and Gina bought this house, they’d thought this room could make a nursery some day.

“You can sleep in here,” he says.

“Okay,” Clarke whispers. “Thank you.”

He pauses. “Or you can stay with me on the couch.”

“Yes,” she agrees instantly.

He takes the comforter off the bed, takes her hand and leads her back to the living room, where he drapes the blanket over them both. It’s not a great couch for sleeping. Not quite wide enough for two people to lay side by side. Nothing like the ones Clarke has in her home. But they wriggle until they find an okay sleeping position. Imperfect, but they make it work, just like everything else about them.

—

He doesn’t remember much about the funeral of his soulmate. Just that he’s sad, but he doesn’t cry, although his mother does.

—

Clarke doesn’t leave after the funeral. In fact, she sort of moves in.

Bellamy’s glad she seems to know he wants her there, because there’s no way he could ask her to stay without feeling even guiltier.

She stays by his side through visitors, people offering condolences, and family. And she stays over most nights at his house, too. Her overnight bag sits in the guest room although they always sleep in the living room together. Neutral ground.

During the day, they’re usually apart. Clarke’s still studying for her finals. And Bellamy works a lot still, but Finn’s schedule is a little more relaxed until the new year, so he says. Not a press tour, even. Bellamy’s not complaining; more time with Clarke at home in the evenings and on the weekends. He keeps a countdown in his head to when Clarke has to go back to school.

Sometimes they talk, sometimes they don’t, but she does make it better, in her way. On her first weekend with him, she announces they’re going to finish the remodelling of the bathroom. Together, they put down tiles, repaint the walls, and install that damn faucet. He touches up the high parts of the wall she can’t reach. She hands him tools when he’s trying to fix the pipes under the sink.

At night they sleep, or try to at least. Sometimes the nightmares keep them up.

One night he opens his eyes at three in the morning because Clarke’s gone from the couch, and his heart leaps in panic—what if she up and left?—but then he hears her talking, muffled, from just outside. He gets up and goes to find her.

She goes silent when he opens the front door and pokes his head out. She’s not on the phone, so for a second he can’t figure out who she was talking to. But he takes her in, sitting on the lawn, the frosty grass. “It’s freezing out,” he tells her. “At least put on a jacket.”

He can’t be sure but he thinks Clarke blushes like she’s been caught doing something. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

He studies her. When he’d opened the door, her head had been tilted towards the sky. It’s clear out, not a cloud to hide the stars. He slowly puts the pieces together. “Were you talking to Wells?”

She bites her lip. “Yes.”

She looks nervous, like he might judge her for it. In truth he’s glad she has found a way to keep Wells with her. “What do you talk about?”

Clarke hesitates, and he realizes he must have overstepped. This isn’t his business. “Never mind,” he says gruffly, taking a step back inside. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“No, wait,” Clarke says, and pats the grass next to her. “Come here.”

He grabs his jacket and hers. “Let’s sit on the Rover.” Clarke must be freezing her ass off in the frost.

They clamber onto the Rover’s hood together, and lean back against the windshield. They gaze at the same star.

“Did I tell you about the time Wells broke someone’s nose?” Clarke says suddenly. His eyebrows raise.

“Now this I gotta hear.”

She tells him how Wells had always had a high tolerance for bullshit, but not when someone talked shit about _her_. He’d tackled a kid two grades above him to the ground and ended that quickly enough. “People thought because he was good, that he must be weak too. They always got the surprise of their lives.”

That sounds about right for Wells Jaha. There were a lot of surprising things about that guy. Bellamy tells her how shocked he was when he found out Wells actually had read many of the classics Bellamy loved. They’d spent hours in the library that first time, reading.

“I was so happy that you two liked each other.” Clarke’s voice is fond, and Bellamy smiles a bit, not bothering to deny it. They gaze up at the sky for a long while.

“We could always get Gina a star, too,” Clarke whispers, but he shakes his head.

“No.” That just feels wrong. This is Wells’ thing now. Besides, he has no problems at all keeping Gina in his thoughts currently. The problem is mostly that she won’t leave.

“Tell me something about her,” Clarke says, and he blinks.

“About Gina?”

“Yeah. Something. A happy memory.”

He closes his eyes and searches in himself for something that isn’t wrapped in the barbed thorns of guilt and grief. It’s harder than it should be.

But eventually he finds a simple memory. He tells her about the roses Gina had planted in the front yard when they first moved in, an attempt to make the place look more inviting.

“Still looked like shit,” he says, “And I told her that, and she said, ‘But now it’s shit with _roses_.’”

Clarke half-laughs, delighted.

“I can’t even imagine Gina swearing. Bet you loved that.”

Bellamy sighs. “Damn right I did.”

—

The last week of Clarke’s vacation comes. He’s painfully aware of it. He doesn’t want it to end. It’s comfortable and safe with her around. Ironically, the guilt doesn’t eat at him as badly when she’s around, even if she’s half the reason for it.

On that last Thursday morning, they yawn periodically as they move around each other in the kitchen. He’s got rhubarb cooking on the stove to put in waffles, a recipe Octavia used to love growing up.

Clarke’s making tea, her towel thrown over her shoulder in preparation for a shower, when she says, “I won’t be here tomorrow.”

He turns around, trying to hide his dismay. He’s getting pathetically clingy. _It’s just one day_ , he tells himself sternly. _She’s got a life, you should be glad she’s only gone for_ one _day_. Of course there’s other things she needs to sort out during this month-long break of hers.

Clarke’s back is to him when she says, “I’m going to visit my mom. In prison.”

He can see right through her casualness. “Alright.” He pauses. “Do you want me to come?”

She shakes her head. “I have to do this by myself.”

He nods, and because things are too silent, he puts his hand deliberately on her back. Just as a reminder that he’s here. The tension in her instantly seems to melt away, and she leans her hands on the counter, her head bowing. They stand like that for just a minute, until finally Clarke pushes away from the counter, and leaves for her shower.

He makes the waffles while she’s gone. As tends to happen with this recipe, some of the runny rhubarb splatters on his shirt during the cooking process. So once he’s done, he puts the waffles in the oven to keep them warm and retreats to the master bedroom to find a clean shirt.

He’s rooting through a drawer in the dresser by his bed when Clarke steps out of the bathroom.

She starts. “Oh.”

He freezes with his hands still clutching a shirt. He usually doesn’t go into the bedroom when she’s in the shower, for this exact reason, but he also hadn’t expected she’d step out so soon.

He looks up and his mind blanks. She’s wrapped in a towel and nothing else.

Desire hits him like a truck, without warning.

Clarke stares at him, clutching the knot of her towel, and he knows she’s seen it. Not only that, but she’s responding to the way he’s looking at her. He can see it in how she bites her lip, how colour rises to her cheeks and spreads slowly down her neck and to the tops of her breasts; how her thighs under the towel shift as though she’s pressing her legs together. The dark look that overtakes her eyes, as though she’s thinking about it too. What it would be like.

God, how he wants to reach over and tug at the knot holding it all together. To see the towel flutter to the carpet and... and…

He shakes himself, appalled. How screwed up is he, that he is having these thoughts on the bed he shared with Gina just a few short weeks ago?

He turns his face away. “Raven’s right,” he says to himself.

“About what?”

He shakes his head, a bitter smile on his lips. “Gina was too good for me.”

Clarke draws closer, wrapped only in that towel, and _fuck_ , she’s unbearable. Even though he’s not even looking at her, he’s hyper aware; there’s the scent of her soap, the weight of her body bowing his bed down as she clambers onto it. The sound of her bare skin sliding over his sheets as she crawls next to him nearly drives him out of his mind.

He’s wrestling with self-control when Clarke takes his face in both her hands, forcing him to look at her. “No, she wasn’t,” she says clearly. “You’re good, too.”

Her voice is husky. It does strange things to his body. Her clean, soapy smell makes his heart beat furiously, along with the knowledge that she is wearing nothing under that towel.

Clarke tilts her head to gaze into his eyes. “You’re _so_ good, Bellamy.”

He gives up. The guilt and the lust become one.

“I’m tired of being good,” he tells her. Then he puts his hand on the back of her neck and pulls her towards him.

Clarke freezes up for a second when he kisses her, but only for a second. Then her lips soften. She kisses him back, and it ramps up far quicker than he had intended—and suddenly they’re just _going_ at it, zero to a hundred in three seconds flat. She wraps her bare, still damp arms around his neck, and he pulls at that ridiculous knot on her towel, unravelling the damn thing.

It falls and gathers at her hips. While they kiss, he slides his hands up the smooth expanse of her back, to her shoulders, to her neck, to tangle through her wet hair while she presses herself against his chest. She’s warm and soft and still wet in the hollows of her body and—It just isn’t enough for Bellamy. He surges forward, pushing her back until her back hits the bed and he can toss the towel out of the way completely.

Clarke’s breathing hard, her wet hair splayed all over the comforter. Her body, too. She stares right at him, looking just as feral as him but waiting, waiting for him to take the long look he’s been aching to have. He’s pretty sure she even arches her back for him.

He knows he’s got a ravenous look on his face but he can’t bring himself to care. All that flushed skin, from her head all the way down to her toes, uninterrupted by lines of clothing. All those soft curves for him to touch. He doesn’t know where to put his mouth first.

Still mulling it over, he crawls fully on top of her, and the position strikes him as bizarrely familiar. A moment later it clicks—they were just like this on the rooftop as teeenagers, kissing innocently.

Well, there’s nothing innocent about them anymore. Nothing fucking innocent about it at all when he gets his hands on her, squeezing her breasts together and revelling in the sound of her moans, in the way her legs wrap around his middle and urge him down. There’s nothing innocent about the way she tugs his hair when he rakes his teeth down her throat and lower, when he captures her nipple in his mouth and sucks punishingly hard.

“ _Bellamy_ ,” she cries, and she’s said his name countless times over their lives, but never quite like _that._ It drives him wild. His grip on her becomes surely bruising. He wants more.

So does she, apparently. Her small hand trails down his abdomen, to the waistband of his shorts, then lower. He gasps and jerks away from her touch involuntarily. He needs a fucking minute here.

She hooks her finger into his waistband, tantalizingly close. He rises slightly off of her to brace his hands on either side of her head and they watch each other, both breathing hard. Her legs around him loosen, and he can feel the evidence of her arousal in how she’s dampened the fabric of his shirt. Adrenaline courses through him. God, he wants her _so badly_. Right here on this bed. He wants to push inside her and watch her face as he does it… and she looks like she wants it too.

Bellamy has seen his best friend in many ups and downs, many states of emotion. He’s seen how Clarke looks when she’s laughing and crying and shouting and everything in between. He’s seen her both heartbroken and happy. He thought he’d seen it all. But it strikes him here that there is a part of her he has had no claim to up until now. He still has no idea what she looks like when she’s coming undone. And he’s greedy for it. He wants that final piece of her, too.

He palms her breast again, just to see the expression on her face, to hear the startled sound that escapes her. The light glints off his wedding band, still on his hand, and he pauses to stare at it for a second. It hurts him to look at. The hurt he deserves, the hurt he wants. S _ee what a horrible soulmate you were_. _See the truth._

Clarke turns her head to follow his gaze, and sees it too. Her lips part. “Bellamy.”

She says his name like a warning. He wants it to go back to how it sounded before. He leans down again, but she pushes at his chest, making him stop.

“No,” she murmurs, her voice still husky. “No.” She’s pale suddenly, and he can see her mind working. Figuring out exactly what he’s doing, laying her out naked on the bed he shared with Gina, with his wedding band on.

It’s confirmed when she says, softly, “Bellamy, I’m not letting you use me to prove to yourself you’re a monster.”

The words are like a bucket of ice water.

He laughs but it sounds empty. He clambers off her and leans against the headboard. “Trust me, Clarke, you didn’t even need to be around for me to prove that.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

She sits up, too, naked and tousled and flushed and—he averts his eyes. The towel’s on the floor where he’s thrown it. The shirt he’d been about to change into before this all happened is still on the bed, though, so he grabs it and tosses it in Clarke’s direction.

She huffs but puts it on. Once he can hear that she has, he looks back at her, and the sight of her draped in his shirt is almost worse, but he can’t well tell her to take it off again. He drops his face into his hands with a frustrated groan.

“Are you going to answer my question?” Clarke asks after a rather long minute.

Head still buried in his hands, he mutters, “You know what it meant.”

“No, I don’t. I need you to explain it to me. And I need you to look at me, too.”

Her voice is strong, commanding, and helplessly he lifts his face up again. She’s got her knees tucked under her, arms wrapped around herself, and thankfully staying on her side of the bed. Her eyes are intent on his, her entire body still, waiting for him to speak. Telling him without words that he has her full attention.

She deserves an explanation after what he just did to her and he _knows_ that. He just doesn’t know where to start.

“Gina and I got into an argument before she left that night,” he finally says. Clarke nods.

“I know.”

“It was about you.”

Her eyes widen infinitesimally. She bites her lip, lashes sweeping down, as though considering. “Tell me,” she says finally.

He does. He proceeds to tell her everything Gina had said to him that night. About children and love and the part of his soul that Clarke has. He’s memorized every word perfectly, because every night her ghost whispers them into his ear as he’s trying to sleep.

Bellamy tells Clarke all of it and leaves nothing out. He sees realization dawning in her eyes. Surprise, too.

When he’s finished he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and Clarke says, in a tender voice he doesn’t deserve, “You can’t blame yourself for this. You loved her. Don’t pretend like you didn’t do everything in your power to make her happy.”

“Well, that didn’t help much in the end, did it?” he mutters. “She still left that night crying.” He’s been cheating on Gina emotionally for so long he’s sort of amazed he hadn’t realized it until now. Gina probably went back to work that night wondering why she, his soulmate, wasn’t enough for him. She would have become distracted with the question while on the job…

“If I had just loved her enough—” he begins, but she cuts him off sharply.

“Don’t, Bellamy. Don’t go down that road. I’ve been there before and it’s not good.”

Bellamy doesn’t say anything more. But he knows the same question haunts her to this day. There’s no real answer to it, and that’s the worst part. They just have to live with it.

He clambers off the bed. “I made waffles. Come on.”

—

A few minutes later, Clarke emerges from the guest bedroom with her own clothes on, hair drying. He relaxes slightly. Although he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the image of Clarke naked and moaning beneath him. He has a feeling he’ll be revisiting it in the shower later, however fucked up that it is.

Clarke looks down at the kitchen table, which he’s set with plates and maple syrup and whipped cream and fresh berries and glasses of milk, then up at him. “Is this supposed to be your apology for groping me back there?”

He nearly sprays his tea everywhere. “I wasn’t— _groping_ —” He stops when he realizes she’s giggling silently, and also because there’s no point in denying it. Here in the sunny kitchen it strikes him as funny, and then he’s grinning too. “Yeah, yeah, have your damn laughs. Well? Is it a good enough apology?”

Her eyes dancing with mischief, she tears off a piece of waffle, popping it in her mouth. “I’ll take it.”

They sit across from each other at the kitchen table and eat, and every so often, he’ll catch her eye and they’ll both start laughing again.

—

Twenty-four hours later, Clarke’s sitting at a cool metal table, waiting for her mother to come out and see her.

This is her first time visiting her mother in the prison, and she’s nervous. She eyes the other women coming out to see their visitors. Abby Griffin is a well known name, and being well known can’t be a good thing when you’re new to places like these.

While she’s waiting, she lays her hands palms up on the table. Her chess rook soulmark stares back at her. Her gaze shifts. Her right wrist is carefully blank, of course; she’d re-applied concealer on it this morning, as she does every morning immediately after her shower.

God, how lucky was she that Bellamy hadn’t seen it yesterday?

That was her first clue, actually, that him kissing her and touching her wasn’t completely about _them_. If Bellamy was paying attention he would’ve noticed her second soulmark immediately. But she’d wrapped her arms quickly around him and he had been more focused on other parts of her body, anyway.

She shivers a little at the memory, crosses her legs under the table. The time they’d kissed as teenagers is something she occasionally looks back on, and she always feels warm at the thought. She feels a little more than warm thinking about this though.

She’d actually had trouble looking at him in the kitchen afterwards; he just looked so _good_ , standing in the same T-shirt he’d given her to wear minutes before, the shorts she’d slipped her hand halfway into. His hair still tousled from her hands. She had always loved his curls. Soft, with just the right amount of scratch. It had made her think of what it might feel like on the insides of her thighs.

She’d had to make a joke at that instant to stop herself from climbing him like a tree.

There’s movement at the doorway, and Clarke half-stands to see her mother being brought in. She’s wearing drab, brown prison issue clothes. Her wrists are bound in front of her. She looks gaunt.

“Clarke,” she whispers, and sinks into the seat across from her. Clarke matches her. She tries not to move a muscle, not in her body, and not in her face. Seeing her mom like this is killing her.

Abby’s eyes fill with tears. Clarke tries to smile.

“Mom, don’t. Don’t.”

“I’m sorry, Clarke.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s Lexa’s.”

“I’m the one who did the crime. And now you have to live with it, too, so I’m sorry.”

A long pause. Clarke wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, realizing too late she’d put on mascara.

“Kane’s told me what’s happening at the company,” Abby says. “And that you’ve agreed to take on a role. I’m glad.”

Clarke doesn’t tell her the only reason she’s doing it is for the soulmarks research. She doesn’t want to talk about that at all. “How are things here?” she asks, and watches her mother’s face fall. “Are people treating you okay? Can I do anything for you?”

Her mother doesn’t answer any of her questions. “It’s only five years, Clarke.” She seems to be talking to herself more than Clarke. “Just five years. It’ll be over in no time.”

She refuses to say anything more about it.

—

Clarke returns home that night feeling hollow. It’s nearly ten at night; the porch lights of Bellamy’s house are on.

“Night,” she says mindlessly to Roan, and starts to get out.

“Are we headed back to your school on Sunday?” Roan asks. Clarke sighs.

“I guess so. Take Saturday off, I’m staying home.” She always relieves him of duty when she’s at Bellamy’s place. Roan had tried to argue it once, that just because Bellamy was trained didn’t mean he was mentally on the job while at home. But she’d waved it away. She trusts Bellamy. Full stop.

Bellamy’s front door opens before she even reaches it, and Bellamy’s silhouetted in the hallway, wearing a tan T-shirt and sweats. Without really meaning to, she breaks into a jog to hug him.

He catches her. Clarke puts as much as she can into that hug. She was gone for just one day, and it already feels like it was a lifetime. She has no idea how she’s going to go back to how it was before.

She feels him exhale, his hand press into her hair. Then he pulls away to search her eyes intently.

She tries so hard for stoicism, but god, it’s so hard. “She’s not okay, Bellamy,” she whispers. “She won’t tell me how bad it is but I can tell it’s bad in there and there’s nothing I can do, and—”

He smoothes her hair away from her face, and leads her inside. “Okay.”

She can’t stop now, though. The door closes behind them and she keeps going. “There were paparazzi outside when I came out asking me about her, what I was going to do, and I don’t want to think about that. They say that prison has a bad reputation when it comes to newcomers. I’m terrified for her. I just don’t know what to do. I can’t help her.” She pauses because he’s silent, and god, what is she doing, putting her problems on him when he’s got his own? “Never mind. Let’s just go to sleep.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Bellamy says, and she realizes he’s still watching her, his hands propped on his hips.

“Which is?”

“Not sleeping.”

She blinks, her mind going back to yesterday morning—

Bellamy exhales, and she can tell he knows what she’s thinking. A sticky moment. Then the corner of his mouth curls up. “Get your head out of the gutter. I mean let’s go out.”

Clarke feels herself flush, but she’s not touching that one with a ten-foot pole, although they’re already past it. “Go out? Right now?” She glances at the clock. “You mean go clubbing?” She hasn’t done that in forever. Celebrity clubs are cesspools.

He shrugs. “Yeah. We both know we’re not sleeping tonight anyway.”

That much is true. Clarke was fully prepared to lie awake with her thoughts until the sun rose. Going somewhere and getting lost in a crowd and forgetting herself sounds like the most amazing thing right now. But… “I’ll get recognized.”

“Give me some credit, Clarke.” He leans closer to her, a glint of the teenage, rebellious Bellamy of old in his eye. “I’ve snuck you out before.”

—

A little while later, they get in the Rover. Clarke’s put on a little black dress which does fantastic things for her cleavage, and she knows he noticed. Not because he was looking, but because he very deliberately wasn’t. He did that when they were teens, too, when she came out in her bathing suit, or a deep cut shirt. She thought he was just being respectful. Now she suspects it’s actually a self-control thing. That thought sends a dangerous thrill through her body.

While Bellamy’s driving, she looks at him under her lashes, leaning her elbow against the window and propping her chin up with her hand. He’s in a collared plaid shirt, buttons open over a white tee, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His hair curls around his ears, his jaw gleams, freshly shaved and showered. He looks hot as fuck.

Clarke’s had thoughts like this before. She knows he’s had thoughts like this before too. She tells herself that’s okay. They’re adults, and have always had some chemistry despite their differing soulmarks. Clarke isn’t planning on ruining their friendship, but she can sit here and appreciate, can’t she?

She tears her eyes away and adjusts her red wig. “I can’t believe you still have this.”

“I can’t believe it still _fits_ ,” he remarks, giving her a side glance. “It kind of makes you look like a stripper now.”

“It does not!” she gasps, even though she’s secretly thrilled by the playful mood he’s in tonight. She’s not seen him grin this wide in a long time, and—god, she loves him, and she’s so happy to know that this part of him still exists.

He’s still smirking, so she pushes his arm. “If I look like a stripper, that’s _your_ choice in wigs.”

“Or maybe my choice in company.”

She snorts and picks up the six-pack on the floor between her feet. He’d brought it for her. “You’re such an ass.”

They pull onto the side of a busy, downtown street, into a parking lot, and he tells her the club he’s thinking of is just two blocks down. She offers him a can. He shakes his head.

“I have to drive us back.”

“Oh, so I can drink but you can’t?” She scoffs. “We’ll take a cab. I’ll call Roan and get him to pick up the Rover. In the middle of the night,” she adds, because she knows Bellamy will be pleased at the prospect of inconveniencing her bodyguard.

Sure enough, he accepts the beer. They tip their cans back as one and drain them. Then they get out.

The sidewalk is busy, the city nightlife thriving on a bustling Friday night. Anxiety gets to her despite herself, and she clings to Bellamy’s side. He wraps his arm around her waist, tucking her close to him. “Keep your face turned towards me,” he whispers, and she does. It’s not exactly a chore.

They pass couples and food vendors and neon signs and finally stand in line at a club, where Clarke gets even more anxious, because the bouncer is sizing everyone up.

But when they get to the front of the line, the bouncer breaks into a wide smile, opens his mouth to speak, but Bellamy beats him to it.

“Can I call that favour in, Riley?”

Riley’s eyes land briefly on Clarke tucked into his side. “You got it,” he says immediately, and ushers them inside.

Clarke means to ask who he was, because she’s never seen him before, but then the bass of the music swallows them up, and there’s no real room for conversation.

—

They drink some more. Clarke buys them shots, and he lets her spend her money. She suspects this is only because it’s hard to get into an argument about it when you can barely even hear each other.

It’s a crowded, casual club, full of sweaty, gyrating bodies, strobe lights; the cheap shit. Even in her thin dress she’s getting hot. She fans herself and Bellamy shucks his plaid layer off, leaving him in a sleeveless undershirt, his muscled arms bare.

She fans herself some more.

“You’re not going to find that shirt later,” she yells at him, as he tosses it on a stool.

He raises his eyebrows, like, _does it look like I care_? And then leads them both to the dance floor.

They keep close to each other and Clarke loses herself to it for a little while, to becoming part of a crowd, to the sweat dripping down her spine, to the heat of Bellamy just behind her, crowding her in but also protecting her.

At some point she loses balance, her high heel tipping to the side, but Bellamy’s hands catch her around the hips, stopping her from a sprained ankle, and haul her back up.

She instantly puts her hands on his, keeping them there, on her hips. She turns her head a little towards him, and his face is right _there_ in her peripheral vision.

She tilts into him, thoughtless, raising her arms to the ceiling, swaying to the beat of the music. Her hair’s sticking to her face. He pulls it back, fingers brushing the nape of her neck, and then his cheek presses against hers as he tugs her into him. They dance like that a while.

She turns around in his embrace to find his gaze is half-lidded, lips parted, cheekbones gleaming. His shirt’s damp with sweat and pressed to his skin, so when she threads her arms around his shoulders, she can feel the muscles in his back shifting under thin fabric. Her heart settles in her chest. She’s safe right here with him, in the world that is his arms, and the real world is very far away. It’s exactly what she wanted tonight. To be alone with him in a crowd full of people.

“I’m glad you exist,” she tells him, and he bends his head, clearly because he didn’t understand over the music. She leans up on her toes to repeat it, threading her hand into his curly, messy hair, her lips brushing against the shell of his ear. “I’m so glad you exist, Bellamy Blake.”

She hasn’t even gotten through his full name before he turns his head slightly and his lips are on her cheek, so quickly that she only registers he kissed it after he’s retreated again. Butterflies erupt in her stomach.

He wouldn’t say it back because that’s not his way; he rarely says what he feels about her out loud. But he says it louder in other ways. Such as the look in his eyes when she’s pulled away from his ear. And then the way he presses his forehead against hers, and holds her tight. She clutches onto him equally tight. Like they’re each other’s tether to the world and all the good things in it.

They dance the night away without a wink of sleep. Somehow it still feels like she’s dreaming.

—

The next day does not feel like a dream.

“This hangover is your fault,” Clarke groans.

“Well, sorry then, princess,” Bellamy mutters from his side of the couch. “Didn’t realize I _forced_ you to do four shots of tequila in a row.”

Clarke shoves his legs off her. They got sort of tangled up last night when they collapsed here. Bellamy grumbles but gets up. She watches him stretch and rub his eyes. The truth is they’re _both_ hungover and grumpy and it’s noon and it’s criminal that the sun should be shining this intensely.

It’s Saturday. She has to travel back to school tomorrow. She really does not want to move, though. Her head is pounding.

“Did I throw up last night?” she asks. “I feel like I threw up last night.”

“I feel like I got run over last night.”

“That’s probably what happened,” Clarke says. “Roan came to get the Rover and just—” She mimes putting a gear shift into reverse.

Bellamy’s eyes glitter with amusement. “Bet he was at least thinking about it.”

They share a smirk. The truth is she should give Roan a bonus for what happened last night. She’d called him at four in the morning and he’d answered, all anxious and afraid even though he was off duty. He’d thought something had _happened_.

Then Clarke started talking, nearly incoherent, and he had to get her to repeat her instructions several times. And then when Bellamy said something about Roan suffering from hearing loss, Roan overheard and sighed.

“I get it now,” he said. “I’ll pick you up.”

“No, we’ll take a cab, just pick up the Rover,” Clarke had said.

“Clarke, you’re drunk and so is Bellamy. You’re going to do something stupid in the cab and the driver will tell every tabloid they can find, and then _I’m_ going to have to deal with you crying about it for the next month. Tell me where you are.”

Clarke doesn’t remember much else. But she’s still grinning. Last night was completely idiotic and a bad decision and she never wants to do it again, but. She’d felt carefree, happy.

Her phone buzzes from the coffee table. Bellamy yawns and shuffles off to the bathroom as she grabs her phone.

Finn Collins. _Why did I find out my bodyguard’s wife died from a TMZ article_?

Clarke sits up so fast she feels dizzy. She types back a quick reply. _What_?

His answer comes back a minute later. _You really need to set up Google Alerts on yourself, princess. And for what it’s worth, what they’re saying, I don’t believe it_.

She goes to her internet browser and Googles her name. The articles pop up immediately. CLARKE GRIFFIN SIGHTED WITH OLD FLAME?

She skims the article itself. _Clarke Griffin’s been MIA for a while now, but clearly she’s been up to a lot!_

_An inside source at nightclub Alpha Station tells us that Clarke Griffin herself showed up last night with a certain childhood friend some of us still remember very well—Bellamy Blake. Now, it’s been a long time since we heard anything about him, but according to our source, Blake’s soulmate (and wife) tragically died just over a month ago. The people around Clarke Griffin sure seem to drop like flies!_

_We didn’t get a photo from Clarke and Bellamy’s night out, but we hear things were getting steamy between the two old friends. Clarke really didn’t wait for Blake’s bed to get cold! But, who could blame her?_

There’s an old candid photo of a scowling, nineteen year old Bellamy to make their point. Clarke scrolls to the comments.

She can’t get through more than a few before she stops, feeling more nauseous than ever.

She hears Bellamy coming back.

“Clarke, you want coffee? Or tea? Or…” she hears him rummaging around. “Aspirin?” When she doesn’t respond, he says her name again.

She wipes her eyes. “Yeah, I’ll take one.”

He comes around with two mugs and then stills. “Clarke, what’s wrong?”

She feels her face crumpling, but she just looks up at him and shakes her head, rapidly. He sets the mugs down and puts a hand out for her phone, which she’s still holding. She gives it to him and lets him read.

 _Of course_ the press found a way to taint what had been one of the most carefree, happy nights in recent memory. A memory she’d been looking forward to treasuring, is no longer hers. Now it’s the tabloids’ to speculate over how she’s taking advantage of a grieving man.

And are they really off base? Now she’s overthinking her tipsy thoughts about Bellamy’s attractiveness on the way to the club. She’s thinking about how she encouraged him when he kissed her in the master bedroom. It puts everything into a new light that sours it completely.

“How did they even know?” Bellamy mutters, then answers his own question. “Fucking _Riley_. Kid never knows when to keep his mouth shut.”

He looks over her, and she’s not even bothering to wipe at the tears in her eyes. He sighs, sets the phone on the table and puts his hand on her shoulder. It’s usually a comforting weight, but right now it makes her hunch; she feels dirty. He shouldn’t be touching her.

“I don’t care what the tabloids say,” Bellamy tells her. “You and I know that whatever they’re writing about us isn’t true. That’s all that matters.”

“No, it’s not,” Clarke cries, and he blinks in surprise. Because he doesn’t get it, and how could he? “It matters to _me_ , Bellamy. I can’t just ignore it. It affects my life. Just look at the comments. Everyone reads these stories. And almost everybody I’ve ever met had an opinion about me already, including you.” He flinches a bit but doesn’t refute it because well, they both know it’s true. “It just gets worse over the years. I had to convince my school just a few months ago that I wasn’t abusing opioids because TMZ had a story on it. That’s not even the worst of it. People think I’m a psychotic murderer who chose not to save her soulmate’s life and does drugs and has too much casual sex and gave up her family’s company and got her mom thrown in prison and now I’m going to be a bitch who wrecked your life and disrespected Gina and…”

“Clarke...”

“... and sometimes they’re _right_ , and that’s the worst part,” she finishes. “They just broadcast how ugly I am to the entire world and everybody just eats it up.”

Bellamy doesn’t ask her about which parts they’re right about. He doesn’t speak at all for a long moment, and then finally he draws her to him in a hug.

‘I’m going to kill Riley,” he says, and she sniffles a laugh into his shoulder. He gets it now, she thinks. Why she could never stop reading tabloids, stop listening to what people said about her.

She’s so done with it. She’s exhausted from the world. Don’t they deserve a fucking break?

An idea comes to her.

If she’s honest, it’s an idea she’s thought about this whole month, ever since her faculty had told her it was an option.

“Bellamy,” she says suddenly, pulling away. “I don’t think I’m going back to school.”

His soft expression melts away and he gives her a hard look. “You promised me you wouldn’t do that.”

“Not for that reason,” she replies, and the more she thinks about it, the better the idea feels. “But maybe for a different one. My faculty said I could join the next incoming class if I needed it. I think I do need it. I think _we_ do.”

“Clarke, I don’t—” He swallows, leaning away from her now, “you don’t need to stay here for me. I can handle things. You’ve already helped. Don’t do this for me.”

His voice is quiet. But she’s not fooled. He’s begging her, and he doesn’t do that often, and it tugs at her heartstrings. But she smiles and puts her hand on his cheek, because the idea is taking flight in her imagination.

“I know you’d be fine handling things if I left right now. We’d both manage. But—I don’t want our lives to be just about handling the next crisis, Bellamy. I don’t want to settle for being just ‘fine’ anymore.”

She watches the words land, the way he blinks.

“You and I haven’t had a break since things started happening.” When Wells and her dad died and then things just piled up. The company, her mom, both of their many heartbreaks, the press. “Now we have a chance to just… just _go_. Just run away from the world for a little while. A few months, that’s it. When are we going to have a chance like this again? You and me. Like last night but no hangover and no paparazzi.”

He’s already shaking his head halfway through her spiel. “I have a job, remember? Your boyfriend Spacewalker. I have to give months’ notice when I go on leave.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.” She chews her lip and mulls it over, then brightens as she thinks of a solution. “I’ll ask Roan to replace you for a while on his security detail. I’ll pay him extra. He’ll go for it.”

Bellamy sits back on the couch, his brow furrowed. He’s got a different look in his eye now. Like he’s actually thinking about it. That for the first time in their lives, they could both be completely untethered.

But his skepticism remains. “Where would we even go?”

She grins. “I think I know a place.”

—

She asks Roan the very next day, as they’re driving to the old Arkadia headquarters—now with the Polaris logo on it. Roan listens in silence to her offer, the pay, and doesn’t even comment on the implication that she and Bellamy are going off the grid together. Then:

“I’ll do it,” he says, and she exhales in relief. “But this seems like a good time to tell you I’m planning to leave Eligius within the year.”

“ _What_?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Thought I’d be your bodyguard forever?”

She sits back in stunned silence. The truth is, Roan’s been a part of her life so long, she’s sort of took that for granted. That he’d always be there to protect her, to annoy her, to watch her grow up. Of course she knew he had his own life too, and every time he took a leave of absence she was reminded of it, but still… she doesn’t know how to respond.

“My buddy Ontari works a job in wildlife protection, up in the Arctic circle. She got me interested. It’s just time to change it up. No offense, obviously.” His voice is wry.

“None taken.” Clarke struggles to say something else through the weird ball of emotion in her throat. “Maybe up in the Arctic you’ll finally find someone with your ‘icicle’ soulmark.” She uses air-quotes. “Like a polar bear.”

“You can just say ‘thank you for your incredible service all these years, Roan.’ Say it with me. It’s not hard.”

“It is very hard, actually.” She means to say it like a joke, but her voice comes out sort of wobbly. Because saying goodbye _will_ be hard.

He seems to notice. “Relax, Clarke. I won’t leave until I find you a replacement. A good one, someone I trust.”

It touches her, that he’d go to those lengths. “Thank you,” she says sincerely, and he nods, and it’s all very heartwarming, at least until she reaches to change the radio dial.

He slaps her hand away. “Don’t push it.”

—

She goes into the Polaris building, where the marks of the ARKADIA logo plating still haven’t faded from the walls, and heads down to engineering.

Thelonious Jaha is in his office and looks up with a smile when she walks in.

Jaha left corporate leadership completely when Wells died. He now spends his days working quietly down here, and Clarke is glad for it now. “Did Lexa send you the research I told her to?” she asks him.

He nods, slowly. “I still have to advise against this. People will find out you’re revisiting these files. Your mother went to prison for them.”

“Not these ones.”

“Technically,” he concedes. “Which is why they’re still here. But they’re part of the same project. And going down this road again might lead you to the same place.”

She’s starting to get annoyed. “Well, I can’t just close my eyes and pretend this research doesn’t exist. Not when there might be answers in there.”

“Answers to what?” She’s quiet. “Soulmarks? Clarke, there’s ideas on their mechanism and patterns, but there aren’t truly answers to soulmarks at the end of the day. Sometimes you have to accept that certain things will always be out of your control.”

“No, I _don’t_ ,” Clarke snaps. “Now, _please_ start working on these. I’m going to be out of town for a while, but you can call me if anything comes up.”

She spins on the heel and leaves his office, but she feels the weight of his thoughtful gaze on her back the whole way up the corridor.

—

Finn’s less than pleased when she calls him.

“Wait, I thought the tabloids had it wrong. But they didn’t? You’re going off with _Bellamy_?” He makes it sound like a disease.

“I never said that,” she says impatiently. “I just said Bellamy is taking a leave of absence because of Gina’s death. And I had to argue with him to get him to do it. He was planning to stay and work his job for _you_.” Finn’s silent. Clarke goes on. “Now, just answer the question. Will you accept Roan as a replacement? I’m even offering to pay his salary, Finn. He’s good. Take it or leave it.”

Eventually Finn sighs. “Whatever you want, princess. But you owe me a drink for this.”

—

“We’re here,” Bellamy says. “Are you sure this is the place?”

Clarke looks at the information Monty had texted her, then up at the sign. GREEN STATION FARMS AND NURSERY, it reads. They’ve been driving up a road seeing nothing but canola fields for so long that she’d started to wonder if Jasper and Monty were just playing an elaborate prank. But no. It’s real. There’s a dirt road through this entrance and in the distance, a log house with a wraparound porch, with an adjoining building and large greenhouses that stretch into the distance. “This is it.”

Bellamy takes the Rover down the dirt road and parks next to one of the greenhouses. At that moment the front door of the house opens and Monty steps out, his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets as per usual. It’s been raining; January is wet and cold in this area.

“I never thought you’d actually take me up on my offer,” he says to Clarke as she jumps out of the Rover. Clarke smiles and hugs him. It’s been a long time since she saw him.

“Don’t you have a Master’s degree to get back to?”

“I’ll start my semester once I get you two settled,” Monty replies, and glances behind her. “Hey, I’m really sorry to hear about Gina. I only met her during your wedding but she was really nice. Caught me stealing mints off every table and gave me a whole bag. It can’t be easy to lose your soulmate.”

Bellamy just sort of nods without making eye contact. The gesture might come off as rude to some but Clarke knows it’s only because the kind words have caught him off guard.

“Let me show you around,” Monty says. “If you two want to work here, I have to make sure you know the ropes.”

—

Monty brings them inside to introduce them to his parents, who welcome them warmly. Hannah Green aggressively insists they have a snack even though they’re not hungry.

“It was so nice of you to offer to help with things while you’re here,” she says. “We could use some help in the nursery during this season. Most of our field workers leave this time of year.”

“It’s the least we could do,” Clarke replies.

Monty then takes them to a tiny cottage on the property, a ten minute walk away from the main house. On the way he talks about his Master’s thesis, which is about bioengineering algae or something, Clarke doesn’t really understand. Bellamy asks him lots of questions, though, and she can tell he’s interested.

She aches for every opportunity he’s lost.

Monty opens the cottage door for them. Immediately inside there’s a kitchen and living area crammed into one, and a bathroom that is only slightly bigger than a closet. “During the on-season, we usually have field workers living here,” Monty explains. “But it’s yours this year.” He pauses, looking between them as he points to the stairs. “There’s two bedrooms up there.”

He doesn’t sound certain that they’re going to make use of both.

The next stop is into one of the huge greenhouses. Clarke blinks at how gigantic it is, like a warehouse.

At her surprise, Monty says, “We’ve got three hundred thousand square feet of greenhouse space. Yeah, you could say it’s a lot.”

He walks them through some of the aisles. This place is full to the brim with life. As he goes, he points out different plants—chrysanthemum, english daisies, forget-me-nots, pansies and violas, kale and vegetable starters—they sell it all in a store not far from here. “But we won’t get you working in the store for obvious reasons,” he says with a snort. “Nah, we’ll get you doing the grunt work. Watering plants, moving soil around, whatever we feel like making you do.”

As it turns out, Clarke and Bellamy are both absolutely useless when it comes to nursery tasks. “You can’t just yank the berry off, it’s going to explode,” Monty says with a somewhat exasperated air when he’s showing them the blueberry plants. “You have to roll it into your fingers, gently.”

“I have no idea how to do that,” Clarke says. Bellamy beside her looks at his own berry stained fingers. They’re not good at things like this. They’re good at: fighting for their lives, fighting for their sanity, planning funerals, moping at weddings, and making horrible decisions that hurt people around them. Clearly those skills aren’t transferable here.

Monty shakes his head. “Well, you’ll learn.”

—

And they do.

Monty bids them goodbye at the end of the weekend, and Hannah Green takes Clarke’s request to be kept busy quite seriously. Every day they wake with the sun, and work in the greenhouses all day, where it gets surprisingly hot even with the cooler season. There’s always plenty to do. If there’s not, Hannah sends them to Jasper’s family farm on the adjoining property to help with their planting.

Clarke gets used to the sight of dirt under her fingernails, gets used to the ache of her arms from carrying things around all day. She and Bellamy are both so tired at the end of each day that they start sleeping in the same bedroom, a tangle of exhausted limbs under the covers. Then they get up the next day and do it all over.

Still, it’s a different kind of tired. A good, rewarding kind. The kind that makes her feel like she’s doing honest work for the first time in her life.

A month in, she’s on a ladder watering flowers, swatting away bugs and sweat dripping down her back. She hears the distinct rumble of Bellamy’s voice far away. She automatically pauses to glance behind her. She sees him across the greenhouse, talking to Monty’s father with two huge bags of soil hefted on his shoulders. And she’s overtaken with a light feeling of simple, uncomplicated _happiness_. That she’s here with him, that every evening, including this one, she’ll go home with him and they’ll make dinner together and then curl up under the covers and talk about their days until they fall asleep.

“What are you grinning about?” he asks her later, when they pass each other on their respective errands.

“Nothing.”

“Well,” he says, somewhat grumpily, “We’ve got a problem.”

The way those words make her brain leap with anxiety, kicking into fight or flight mode, is instant. He pauses and seems to see that. “Not that kind of problem,” he says quickly. “It’s just, apparently there’s a fox getting in and trampling plants. You have no idea how many seedlings it’s gotten into.”

Clarke’s heart rate slows again. She could almost laugh from relief, that this is now their biggest problem. She kind of loves it.

“It must be getting in through somewhere,” she says. “Let’s just find where.”

They spend a whole day looking for the rip in the greenhouse wall that’s been allowing it in, and their giddiness when they find it is a high like Clarke’s not had in a long time. They go to the shed and behind an old kite that’s seen better days, and some shovels, they find some tarp they can patch it over with.

Then they go back to the cottage, where Monty’s father has installed for them a tiny, twenty-inch television. It’s practically a relic. They flop onto the kitchen floor and watch old movies play until the sun sets and they realize they didn’t even make dinner.

It’s one of the best days of Clarke’s life.

—

One day, Bellamy comes to her, frantic. “I’ve lost my ring.”

“Your what?”

“My ring, my wedding ring.”

Oh. She sets down the trays of vegetable starters she’d been about to bring to the front. “Where’d you last see it?”

“I put it in my pocket,” he taps the pocket of his cargo shorts, “but there was a _hole_ in it. Clarke, I have to find it—”

She touches his cheek. “I know.”

He exhales and nods, and they search. They search all morning and all afternoon in between tasks, and then they spend all evening looking. Cicadas are chirping in the long grasses outside when Clarke comes to find him.

He’s just outside one of the greenhouses, staring into the distance. The wind ruffles his hair, his shirt.

“We’ll find it tomorrow,” she says gently.

His face is inscrutable. “No, we won’t.”

“We’ll ask Hannah to keep an eye out for it.”

He’s silent, somewhere far away, but when she takes his hand and leads him back to their cottage, he doesn’t resist.

—

The weather warms. More workers come to start planting for the upcoming summer season.

“You don’t need to worry,” Hannah tells them kindly. “These aren’t the types of people who run to the press.”

Still, Clarke is nervous. One word, one sneaky photo, and her cover here is blown.

Later, Bellamy asks her in the privacy of their bathroom, “You sure you want to trust these people? We could always go back. We’ve been here three months.”

He doesn’t sound like he wants to. Clarke sure doesn’t want to either. She spits toothpaste into the sink.

“No,” she says casually. “I believe Hannah.”

He seems to relax a little, and reaches over her head to grab his own toothbrush. “Then we stay.”

—

Clarke wakes one spring day and can instantly tell it will be a bad day. It’s the anniversary—of her father’s and Wells’ death. She turns on her side only to find Bellamy staring back at her, already awake. She can tell just by looking at his expression he knows exactly what day it is.

Bellamy gets up. “Come on,” he says when she doesn’t move.

“I don’t want to work today.” She knows the Greens wouldn’t care if she took the day off to mope. She usually does on this day, every year. She just has to get through it. Then she can wake up tomorrow and return to life.

Bellamy doesn’t push her anymore. He leaves the room. She listens to him go downstairs, hears the water running, the sounds of his footsteps. She hears him walk to the front door, hesitate, and then leave.

She feels very utterly alone in the cottage.

After a minute, she flings the covers off.

In the kitchen, Bellamy’s left her a plate of eggs and toast. She sits down and eats woodenly as she looks out the window. Thick clouds. It’ll storm tonight.

Something drops in the pit of her stomach. She won’t be able to see the sky, the stars. She won’t be able to talk to Wells. Still staring out the window, she stands to wash her plate, and knocks over the cereal box. It tips and spills cereal onto the floor.

Great. She gets the broom and sweeps it up, then gets on her hands and knees to make sure she didn’t miss anything under the stove.

It’s only because she’s there that she spots a glint of silver from just under the fridge. Bellamy’s wedding ring. It must’ve fallen from his pocket even before he went to work in the fields that day.

She fishes it out and heads outside. The wind blasts in her face ferociously. It blows at trees in the orchard so strongly their trunks are bending.

She finds Bellamy in the greenhouse, lugging around the watering hose. He stops when he sees her, and his eyes warm. He must not have been sure she would leave the cottage.

She comes up to him and holds up his ring. “Look what I found under the fridge.”

He zeroes in on it, stills. He takes it from her, balances it in his palm. Stares, expressionless. “Thanks,” he says finally, voice quiet.

Bellamy doesn’t put it back on, she notices. He puts it on his keychain instead.

They work mindlessly throughout the day. Clarke starts to become glad Bellamy convinced her to come out—she’s still thinking about that night, but it’s much harder to get pulled under by it when she’s keeping busy.

Still, it’s not easy. During her lunch break, she plops down on a bag of fertilizer to eat her sandwich. She’s mid-chew when she starts crying, silently. Bellamy finds her like that, sinks to sit next to her and slowly unwraps his own sandwich.

She’s probably a pathetic sight, tears on her face, sweat streaked shirt, knots in her hair from the wind.

“I won’t be able to see his star,” she murmurs, and Bellamy follows her gaze skyward.

“He’ll still be there.”

They eat in silence, shoulder to shoulder. Then Hannah calls out that there’s a new shipment of supplies, and they get up in unison to help with unloading the truck.

Clarke finds herself tired out more easily today, and later that afternoon she leaves early. She goes back to the cottage. There’s whiskey in the cupboard. She drinks a glass, then puts her head down on the table, waiting for sleep to drag her out of this day and carry her into the next.

But it doesn’t. She just thinks about Wells, and her father, as she usually does. She thinks about what she did and what she could’ve done. She thinks about her father lying in a pool of his blood, of Wells’ determined face, of Bellamy with a gun pressed to his head.

The light coming through the window gradually dims as the afternoon wears late. Finally, she hears Bellamy coming in, wind whistling behind him before he shuts the door. She opens her eyes and they stare at each other.

Bellamy goes to sit next to her and pours himself a glass of whiskey. The both of them are dirty and sweaty. But Bellamy, like her, must be too mentally exhausted to shower right now.

She props her chin up in one hand and studies him. His curly hair, getting long again—Hannah will have to give him another haircut. Bellamy had asked Clarke to cut it once and she’d refused, too afraid she would mess it up.

The freckles she’s memorized scattered over his nose and cheekbones. The scar in his lip, the full Cupid’s bow. The sweep of his lashes, the shape of his eyes that she’s always loved, that convey so much even when he says very little.

Like right now, he looks sad, but also strangely content as he gazes at her. She gets it. Today is bad every year, but it’s nice to spend it with someone who understands.

Bellamy swirls his glass. “Want to hear something screwed up?” he asks, without looking at her.

Clarke waits.

“Part of me was hoping we wouldn’t find my ring.”

She stares at him, surprised but also not at all surprised to hear this. He smiles grimly.

“Told you it was screwed up.”

That gets her talking. “No, it’s not. You’re allowed to have mixed feelings. You don’t have to be a grieving widower forever. Gina wouldn’t want that for you, anyway.”

She watches that land, but then he turns it around on her. “Would Wells want that for you?”

She bites her lip and looks away. “I don’t know what he would want. We were so young when he...”

She blinks back tears, and he doesn’t push her anymore. He brings his glass to his lips. Clarke finds herself preoccupied with his hand, his muscled, veiny forearm. She watches him swallow, the way his Adam’s apple bobs. She follows the lines of his throat to his collarbone and where they disappear under his shirt.

Her thoughts start to slide helplessly in a certain direction that she usually has the presence of mind to stop. He seems to notice when he looks at her next, because he stills.

“Clarke.”

His voice is a little deeper than usual. Before he can say anything more, she says, “Want to hear something screwed up?”

He waits, eyes impossibly dark.

“I keep thinking about that morning, in your master bedroom,” she whispers, and he sucks in a breath. She should stop here, she knows. But she keeps going, like a confession she just has to get out, lest it eat her up inside. “I think about it every day. What I’d have done if we were anywhere else than in your and Gina’s bed. I’m thinking about it right now. On the anniversary that my soulmate died. Isn’t that just the worst thing—”

He sets down his glass before she’s even finished talking, leans forward and captures her lips with his.

The kiss is soft, sweet, a far cry from that morning in that master bedroom. His hands slide around her jaw to tilt her face up to him. She doesn’t know what to do with herself for a moment, but then her body gets with the program.

She rises from her seat, breaking from his lips for just a moment before sinking back down on his lap, throwing her legs on either side of him. She kisses his lips, his cheeks, his jawline, his neck, everywhere she can reach, really. She just really loves him. She wants him to know it somehow.

Emotion threatens to overwhelm her. She wraps her arms and legs around him like a koala and presses her face into his shoulder. He doesn’t miss a beat. His hands slide up her back, keeping her against him. She feels his cheek press against her hair. They sit like that for a long time. She loves being close to him. She wants to be even closer. She wants to lose herself in him.

Perhaps Bellamy feels the same way, because out of nowhere he says, “We don’t have to be soulmates to fuck.”

His voice is rough, scraping sweetly against the most sensitive parts of her. She forces herself not to fold immediately. She refuses to be another one of those people who use him. “Why are you saying that? Because I need it?”

“No,” he says hoarsely. “Because I do.”

She pulls away to look at his expression, to study what she sees there. He doesn’t have that dark, guilty look in his eye from the master bedroom. He just looks back at her steadily, and she makes her decision then.

When their lips meet again, it does not stay innocent. His tongue is insistent. He tastes like alcohol and burns like fire.

His hand slides down her side, to her hip. And into her leggings. She rises a little on his lap to allow him better access.

His fingers brushing against her make her break from his lips with a sigh.

“ _Bellamy_ …”

He surges forward to kiss her again, even while his fingers twist and delve between her legs. It’s hard to concentrate on kissing while he’s winding her up like this. She keeps breaking free from his mouth, only to be recaptured again. He’s overwhelming her on two fronts and she is dizzy from it.

Then he becomes clever, pressing repeatedly against a place inside that makes her mind blank. She gasps against his mouth, feels the curve of his smile before she breaks away and rises on her haunches, rocking into his hand.

The thing about them doing this is how quickly Bellamy seems to adapt, figure out what she likes, faster than any other partner she’s had. Every incomprehensible sound she makes he responds to, somehow changing his angle, the strength of his touch, knowing exactly what she needs. Knowing her intimately, and now familiarizing himself with her in a whole new way.

It’s almost embarrassing how quickly he brings her right to the edge.

While she’s gasping, he casually pulls his hand out of her leggings. Sucks on his fingers, and arches a brow.

“Shut up,” she pants even though he hadn’t said anything. She takes his face in her hands and kisses him sloppily, then whispers in his ear. “Let’s go upstairs.”

His hands tighten on her thighs. “I don’t have a condom.”

“I have an IUD.”

He stands in one swift movement, bringing her with him. She squeaks, locking her legs around his waist, her arms around his shoulders.

They find their way to bed together.

Heat simmers under her skin. Her hands creep under his shirt, slide up his muscled chest, feel his furiously beating heart. Pulls at his shirt until he pulls it over his head, and the rest of their clothes come off in quick succession. She sits up, cradling his hips, and runs her hands up and down his muscled abdomen. Her hands are so pale against his skin. She likes staring at the contrast between them.

“Had your fill yet?” he asks dryly, maybe even a hint of old cockiness in there too.

She’s been waiting years for this. “What, I don’t get a turn to grope you?”

“Not this again,” he complains, but with a small smile on his face. She giggles, cuts herself off when he surges up into sitting position, nearly throwing her off if it weren’t for his grip on her hips. He swivels so he’s at the edge of the bed, and she swings back on his lap, just like downstairs, except better. Her body is rip-roaring with what it’s _really_ been wanting—Bellamy Bellamy Bellamy. In every way, in more ways that she already has him. She’s greedy for her best friend and she wants him all to herself tonight.

They go still right at the critical moment. Time hangs suspended. Rain patters against the windows.

“We don’t have to do this, you know,” Clarke whispers in the dark. She’s suddenly afraid, in the same way that sometimes getting exactly what you’ve always dreamed of is scary, because then you have so much more to lose. “Tell me the truth. It won’t hurt me.”

A dark chuckle. “Clarke, the truth hurts _me_.”

Before she can sort that out, he lifts her hips, and her body takes control, primitive, seeking his. And then they are, finally, _together_. In the way they have never been before.

And they clutch onto each other for a second, stunned at what they’ve done, what they’re about to do. Clarke hasn’t had sex in a while, so it burns her body, but the hurt of it, of him, is perfect. She grabs his shoulders and he presses his face into her chest, breathing raggedly. Skin to skin. For once, there is not a single thing between them.

Her definition of home shifts in this moment. Irrevocably. But that isn’t something she worries about right now. She just kisses him. And the rest of the world dissolves for a little while.

—

Clarke wakes mid-morning, and the sad sheen the world had taken on yesterday has fallen away, replaced with the sounds of wind whistling by the window. It’s still just as crappy weather as it was when she fell asleep. She throws an arm to the side, expecting to make contact with Bellamy’s shoulder as it usually does. But instead she hits the mattress.

She looks over and finds that he’s gone.

Then memories from last night flood back. Oh god. She and Bellamy had sex. And a lot of it. She can feel it in the stiffness of her body.

But it’s just that once wasn’t enough. They had cleaned up afterwards, almost cordial, and then found the darkness, the sadness creeping back into the room, and had reached for each other again. And again. It had felt too good to stop. Until they were just too exhausted, and sleep pulled them under.

She hears the door of the cottage open and close. So he was outside, then. She hears his footsteps and instinctively throws the covers back over herself. She still hasn’t figured out quite what to say.

His footsteps stop at the doorway. She doesn’t stir, hoping he thinks she’s asleep.

He says, “Get up.”

Silence.

“I know you’re awake, Clarke. Now get your ass up.”

“No.” Her voice is petulant.

“Then I guess I’ll just go fly this kite by myself.”

She pulls the covers down to see him holding a gigantic, old-fashioned kite. He’s fully dressed in his worn-out jacket and cargo pants. “Where’d you get that?”

“It was in the shed.”

She dimly remembers it from when they’d ransacked the shed looking for something to patch the hole in the greenhouse wall with. “Well, why now?”

He sort of glares at her, and she re-focuses on the kite, realizes it’s even shabbier than she realized, mismatched fabric patched on—and wasn’t the dowel holding it together in the middle broken before?

It clicks. “You fixed it,” she breathes. So this is what he’s been doing with his morning. Keeping his hands busy, his mind too.

He looks down at it, and a flicker of—embarrassment—seems to cross his features. “Never mind,” he says gruffly, turning.

She flings the covers off. “No, wait. I’m coming.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. If you think it’s stupid—”

She swings her legs off the bed. “I am flying that kite, so it’s _your_ choice if you come with me or not.”

He looks at her, and his smile starts to return. She remembers right then that she’s naked. His gaze rolls over her in a leisurely fashion. She doesn’t hide herself. She waits for his eyes to meet hers again.

When they do, she almost thinks it’s going to be an encore, at least until he says, “I’d suggest you put some clothes on first.” He ducks from the pillow she sends sailing at him. Chuckling. “I’ll be outside.”

—

The wind is still strong, warm and dry; chinook weather. When she steps out of the house fully dressed, her jacket zipped up to her chin, a gust knocks her forward half a step.

“Careful,” Bellamy calls. She turns to look at him, hair whipping around her face.

“Where are we going to fly this thing?” she yells. He points off into the open fields of long grass not yet tilled.

They wade out into the long grasses, far away from the greenhouses and cottage and tractor and other equipment that the kite string could get caught in. It’s the kind of weather that can’t quite decide what it wants to be—occasional raindrops fall on them for one minute, then are gone the next, leaving sunshine, then cloud cover, then it all starts over again. The only constant is the strong wind that will fly this kite with ease.

Bellamy offers her the kite, but she shakes her head and pushes it back at him. “You fixed it, you fly it.”

“I always have to do the hard work, huh?” He unspools it.

“Well, obviously,” Clarke says. “Isn’t that what the regular people do?”

He scoffs. “Yeah. Us regular people. But look at you now. You’re one of us.”

She looks down at herself, the dirt on her hands, the grass stains on the knees of her jeans, and tugs at her knotted hair. She does indeed feel very far from heiress, celebrity, infamous Clarke Griffin. Standing in a field of grass, flying a kite with Bellamy Blake, is about beautifully normal as they could get.

Bellamy slowly unspools the kite until all the string is out, the kite is far from them, and it’s just a small rectangle in the sky. He hands it to her.

It’s harder than she thought, with the strong gusts of wind that try to lift her off her feet and yank the kite away.

Bellamy stands back and watches her as she starts laughing. “Bellamy, how do you control this thing?”

“You’ve never flown a kite before?” He sounds aghast.

“No!”

“It’s not that hard—”

Another strong gust of wind pulls at the kite, so hard that she feels the string slipping out of her fingers. “No!” she shouts, and clings on tight, but the wind isn’t letting up this time. She’s caught off balance.

Then Bellamy’s there, behind her, catching her with his arms around her middle. Her feet dangle off the ground, but he holds her to him, and he’s sturdy, immovable by nature. Clarke gets a better grip on the kite and they watch it blow around, a hundred feet above them. Tossed around by the wind. But tethered to the earth by her and Bellamy’s hands.

Bellamy chuckles against her ear, against the whistling air around them.

“What?”

“You can’t even fly a _kite_.”

She elbows him, but she giggles along with him, at least until the occasional raindrops that have been spraying them suddenly become far less occasional.

Bellamy curses. “Reel it in.”

She quickly obeys. By the time it’s back in their hands, the drizzle has become a downpour. Bellamy sets her down and they race back through the grass, trying to beat the storm.

—

They don’t beat the storm. They stomp inside the cottage, completely drenched, winded. But grinning from ear to ear. It’s the best way she could’ve spent the morning.

His smile warms her inside. Fondness grows in her chest until she feels like she might burst with it. She wants to tell him how much last night helped her. How on every other anniversary of the event, she’s cried and drank and tried to keep at bay dark thoughts. But last night, she didn’t think once about the fact that she couldn’t see Wells’ star. She only thought of Bellamy.

“Bellamy,” she says, “About last night—”

“I know,” he interrupts, and his eyes are soft, holding her gaze. “Me, too.”

—

Several days later, it’s Bellamy’s birthday.

Clarke’s excited to spend it with him. She tells Hannah, and the older woman helps her make a cake in the bigger house kitchen. They top it with sticky cream icing, and piles of fresh strawberries picked from the greenhouse that morning. Clarke beams at it, proud of their work.

“What are you going to give him as a gift?” Hannah asks. Clarke’s smile fades a bit.

“I don’t know.” The truth is, she hardly ever gets Bellamy birthday gifts. He doesn’t like it when Clarke buys him things. And she’s not a thoughtful gift giver like he is. Nothing she tries to think of seems to match the enormity of what he means to her.

So instead she goes out to the fields and picks a bunch of wild flowers to go with the cake.

The Greens have them over for lunch, and surprise Bellamy with the cake. He seems taken aback. Clarke stands on her tiptoes and kisses his cheek, then presents him with her carefully tied bunch of flowers.

“I’d buy you something, but—”

“I don’t want you to buy me anything.” He accepts the flowers. He gazes into her eyes, and through Clarke’s peripheral vision she sees how the Greens turn away for a second, giving them a second of privacy. His voice becomes quiet, for her ears alone. “This is perfect.”

And it is. At least, until that evening. Bellamy calls his mother, and Clarke leaves the cottage to give them space to talk. But when she comes back, she can tell it didn’t go well.

“What happened?”

Bellamy shakes his head, a dark look on his face. “She had a relapse.”

Clarke’s heart falls. “Oh, Bellamy.” She touches his arm. “Do you… want to go to her?”

“Her relapse was a month ago,” he says, and it clicks why he’s angry. “She’s only telling me about it now because she’s over it. For now.”

Clarke chews her lip. Bellamy looks very far off. She’s sure he’s remembering being six years old and afraid when Aurora drank too much. She’s sure he’s wondering if one day he’ll be there again.

It sort of makes Clarke angry at Aurora, perhaps a little irrationally. That she ever put that burden on her son’s shoulders in the first place.

They go to bed, silent. Bellamy’s back is to her, but she can practically hear him thinking. She rolls over and wraps her arms around him, pressing her cheek against his back. He relaxes back into her arms. Slowly. And they drift off.

—

In the morning, she wakes to find their positions reversed. Bellamy’s spooning her. And he’s hard against her back.

This is of course not the first or second or even twentieth time this has happened. It’s natural, it’s fine, they’ve never gotten embarrassed about it. But today she just thinks about how he’d fallen asleep sad. She doesn’t want him to wake up that way as well.

She turns around in his arms as slowly as she can, not wanting to disturb his sleep. She watches his eyelashes flutter against his skin, the way he readjusts his hold on her automatically, but doesn’t seem to be fully awake. His face is relaxed like this. He looks younger when the world isn’t weighing on him. She wonders what he’s dreaming about.

Still gazing at him, she brushes her knuckles against his cheek, and he seems to lean into it. But her hand slips away, and he settles back into the pillow.

She puts her hand under the covers between them, skimming over him until she finds the waistband of the soft, grey sweatpants he fell asleep in. She brushes her hand against him.

A sigh escapes his lips.

Clarke dips her hand into his pants. His hips jerk automatically into her hand. She watches as his drowsy eyes open.

“Awake now, are you?” she murmurs, mischievously. Bellamy seems incapable of speech. She strokes him a few times, watches the flush rise over his face. Brown skin glowing in the sunlight through their window. He’s beautiful, she thinks while she touches him. So beautiful it makes her ache.

He finally manages to choke out her name. “Clarke…”

He’s never said it _quite_ like that. She wishes her name was longer, so she could hear him trip over every syllable. But this will have to do.

“Shh, Bellamy.” She kisses the line of his throat, then his collarbone, and down, down his body she crawls.

He seems to wake up more when she’s lifted his shirt to kiss the V of his hipbone, and realize what she’s doing. His hands clamp down like vices on her shoulders, trying to stop her descent.

“Let me do this,” she murmurs against his sleep-warmed skin, pulling at the drawstrings of his pants.

"Clarke... you don't have to.... Ah...."

His voice dies away when she gets her mouth on him.

Occasionally, while she’s doing this, she’ll stop and look up at him. His eyelashes flutter, head tossed sideways into the pillows, jaw clenched in effort not to make a sound, Adam's apple bobbing, the lines of his body taut and growing tenser with every touch of her lips, her tongue, her palm. His hand fists in her hair. She feels a rush of heat between her own legs. Can't help it. There's something incredibly sexy about watching Bellamy enjoy himself. That she’s the one making it happen makes her heady.

He tries to tug her up near the end, but she’s relentless. She wants to hear him come apart under her, and he does.

Afterwards, he’s trembling, and she’s wiping her mouth with the back of one hand while fixing his pants for him with the other. He reaches for her. She pushes away from him, even though her body aches for his touch.

“No,” she says. Firm. She doesn’t want him to feel like he has an obligation to her now. “No strings attached.”

“I want to.”

He rolls onto his hands and knees to grab her. She scoots away like a crab, but a bolt of inspiration hits. She stills. And deliberately, she parts her legs as she does. She’s only wearing panties under this long night shirt, which is now spread over her knees. His eyes sweep down. Come back up much more desperate. She bites her lip, lowers her lashes in invitation.

Holding her gaze, Bellamy reaches between her legs. She spreads them further and lets him palm her there, his hand warm and big and rough over her panties. A sigh escapes her. Just the touch makes her want to rut into his hand. She doesn’t, though. She has an agenda now.

She takes a deep breath and rolls out of bed.

He growls in frustration. “Come on, Clarke—”

“No time. I’m taking the shower first.” She flees from the room. She wants him thinking about it. About what she did, about what he wants to do. She wants to drive him so crazy that at least for one morning he only thinks about her, and not about the things that make him sad.

She locks herself in the bathroom and gets herself off in the shower.

—

And so it becomes easy. Just like that.

They don’t have sex on a daily basis, or even on a weekly basis. But whenever dark memories start to creep in on them, or there’s something on their mind, they reach for each other. It becomes what they _do_.

—

Bellamy isn’t going to overthink what he has with Clarke. It’s good, and it’s exactly what he needs right now. But it only belongs here on this farm.

Spring becomes summer, and he’s quite aware of the fact that soon enough autumn will come, and they’ll have to leave no matter what. But not yet. Not yet.

It’s a hot, humid day when the Greens invite them over for lunch. They finish their work in the orchards early and walk side by side back to the house, through rows of canola.

Out of nowhere, Clarke just reaches down and slaps his thigh holster.

“You still carry your gun around? What, you think a sack of manure is going to jump out and attack you?”

He catches her hand before it can withdraw, clasping it in his own as natural as anything, and they keep walking hand in hand just fucking because. Bellamy knows this is corny as all hell, which is why he’d never say it out loud, but he loves holding Clarke’s hand. “Doesn’t feel right without it. You never know when…”

He stops before he can ruin the sunny mood. Clarke doesn’t say anything for a long minute.

“I want to practice. Could we?”

He blinks. “Practice?” He doesn’t say what he’s thinking—that she shot it perfectly fine that night so many years ago.

“I’m rusty.” Her voice is deceptively light, but her fingers have tightened around his. _Just in case_. Even here, in the rows of canola in the middle of nowhere, they can’t quite escape their pasts or their futures.

So they go out to the open grass, and he sets up a target on the clothesline with a bit of burlap sack he’d found lying around in the greenhouse. He draws an X with a marker in the middle of it, then pulls his gun out, shows her the parts, how to handle and hold it, how to stand when firing. He shoots and the middle of the X billows back.

She’s strangely silent, and he worries maybe he’s overexplaining. She probably still remembers most of this. He turns to her, fully intending to hand over the gun, but finds her biting her lip, hands clasped behind her back, hair blowing into her face from the breeze but still not quite hiding the dark look in her eye.

No. He tries to think of canola, manure, cabbages, anything but what he’s thinking right now. Because this is something they don’t do—don’t have sex for _fun_. That would step over the carefully drawn line. “You wanna try?” he asks gruffly.

She accepts the gun. He helps her adjust her stance and her grip, then takes a pointed step back. She shoots. Hits the tip of the X. She lowers the gun, a small smile on her features.

“Not bad,” he says.

“Remember when you couldn’t even get a mini golf ball into a hole?” she asks.

“You’re such a comedian.”

Clarke tries a few more times, and then it’s time to go for lunch. Since their hands are grimy, Bellamy grabs the water hose from where it’s coiled next to the house and they take turns spraying each other’s hands, then passing a towel between them.

When she passes the towel to him, he notices there’s something on it. He looks closer. A smear of something on the white fabric. It’s peach coloured and pale and very much looks like… like… the colour of Clarke’s skin.

His eyes immediately dart to Clarke’s hands. She’s shaking them out, getting rid of the leftover damp. She’s looking off towards the road, so she doesn’t notice him studying her.

Her right wrist. There’s a blur of—something.

Lightning fast, he grabs hold of her arm.

He’s got her attention now, that’s for sure. “What are you doing?” She tries to tug away from his grip, but he doesn’t let go.

“What’s that on your wrist, Clarke?” he asks slowly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He’s not fooled. Her voice is a little higher than usual and besides, he’s not a moron, despite what Clarke apparently thinks if she’s still trying to hide this. She tugs at him again.

“ _Let go of me_ , Bellamy.” Her voice is loud, commanding.

He lets go. She shrinks back, seeming relieved, at least until he grabs the hose again and aims it to full blast straight at her arm.

She shrieks as half her shirt gets soaked, but he doesn’t care, he’s fucking angry, because he knows exactly what he’s about to see under all her carefully applied makeup. He throws the hose aside after a second and grabs her arm again, rubbing at her wrist with the towel until it all comes clean.

And there it is. A clock face with the hands turned towards twelve. Dark, bold, simple.

A second soulmark.

He lets go as if it had burned him, drops the towel too, and stumbles three steps back. Clarke’s clutching her arm, too, her eyes wide. Half her hair’s wet from the water’s spray.

“Bellamy. I can explain.”

“Can you now.” He sounds far calmer than he feels.

“Yes. I can.”

“Well, this should be good.”

He crosses his arms. Clarke’s mouth opens and closes several times. She looks around as if an escape from this situation might present itself.

When she still hasn’t said anything, he asks, “How long?”

Her eyes dart away.

For fuck’s sake. “How _long_ , Clarke?”

She swallows, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and takes a breath. “It started appearing right before you met Gina.”

He drops his hands and looks up at the sky, chuckling darkly because what other reaction is he supposed to have? “Right. So you’ve been hiding this from me for more than four years.”

“I wasn’t just hiding it from you. I didn’t tell anybody.”

“Oh, good. That makes it so much better.” He can’t explain why he feels so betrayed. It’s _her_ soulmark, her soulmate. But it’s such a huge thing—supposedly the two of them are best friends and she’d hid it from him? Why?

“I was going to tell you,” she bursts, taking a step closer. “When I came home for winter break after my first semester away at school, I was so excited to tell you, but—”

Clarke stops there, halts so suddenly it’s like someone had simply pressed pause on her voice. He waits, but she doesn’t continue. “But _what_ , Clarke?”

She closes her eyes, a faint echo of past pain rippling over her features for a second before she opens them again. “But you had just met your soulmate,” she whispers, and he stares at her, confused.

“So?”

She doesn’t reply. She just hugs herself and holds his gaze, her lips pressed together but quivering. They stare at each other for several moments, and then quite suddenly, the realization crashes into him, knocking him back another step.

Oh.

“You thought it’d be me,” he whispers.

Her eyes fill with tears. She nods.

He can’t breathe.

Neither of them say anything. The only sounds are the occasional car driving down the gravel road, the tinkling of the wind chime, the fucking hose still going at full blast at the side of the house.

Then the door to the house opens, and Hannah pokes her head out to call to them. “Are you two coming in for lunch?”

Bellamy has forgotten how to talk, but Clarke answers without breaking their stare. “Yes, just a minute, Hannah, thank you.”

The door swings shut. Bellamy wants to give his hands something to do, so he walks over to the hose and kneels to shut it off. He hears Clarke come closer, standing next to him.

“I _wanted_ it to be you, you know.”

He blinks back a burning in his eyes. This may be the first time it has ever been acknowledged out loud between them. “We don’t have to talk about this.”

“I think we should. If we’re ever going to move on, we should.” Her voice sounds nearly strangled.

He doesn’t want to move on. He likes what they have. He likes the vagueness of almost, just about, maybe. He doesn’t want the answer solidified to _never_.

Which it will be if they talk about it. If there’s one thing life has taught him—what his father, what all Aurora’s boyfriends have taught him—it’s that things don’t work out if you’re not soulmates. He can’t hurt Clarke like that. He refuses to even entertain the possibility, especially when fate has already given her another person who could make her happier than he could.

Yet another pointed sign from the universe that he and Clarke were never going to work.

He stands up. “Hannah’s waiting for us.”

“Bellamy—”

“It’s alright, Clarke. Whatever happened is in the past now.” His voice is hard and angry and he can’t stop it from being that way. Without waiting for a response, he marches up to the door of the house and knocks.

Clarke follows, and Hannah lets them in.

If they’re a little quiet at lunch, the Greens don’t notice. They also don’t comment on the fact that half of Clarke’s shirt is wet. They feed them, ordering them to take seconds of everything, and it’s delicious although Bellamy’s lost his appetite and Clarke looks a little green. They still eat.

At the end of the meal, Hannah says, “Clarke, would you like to do a grocery run for us?”

Clarke lifts her eyes from her plate, and Bellamy watches her force a smile onto her face, and make it look easy as anything. “Of course.”

The Greens could do their own grocery runs, of course, but Clarke had once said she would like to get off the property once in a while, so sometimes she and Bellamy take the Rover to the nearby village and run errands. The townspeople skew on the older side, and their stores are small and locally owned and don’t own a single tabloid.

Hannah gives them a grocery list and sends them on their way.

—

They’re quiet the whole half hour drive to the village.

In the store, they grab separate baskets and split to grab items. Bellamy goes through his half of the list with military efficiency, his mind somewhere else.

He almost wishes he hadn’t uncovered the second soulmark. Now he can’t stop thinking about Clarke’s mystery soulmate out there somewhere, who Clarke is going to meet someday and fall for. It’s so difficult to imagine, but. There’s no way out of this predicament without breaking either Clarke’s heart or his.

So he’s just not going to think about it.

He slams the cooler door so hard it rattles. Then he goes to find Clarke.

She’s standing at the back of the store, her basket only half-full, staring up at a poster on the wall. An old, vintage movie poster that must have been put up recently. It’s an old film of Jake Griffin’s. He’s in a suit and tie, holding a gun up to the camera. Bellamy goes to stand next to Clarke.

The shopkeeper, sweeping in the next aisle, notices their interest and comes closer. “Yeah, that’s a good one. Only thirty bucks, that poster, if you want it.”

Clarke shakes her head, tugging her cap down. The shopkeeper shrugs.

“Fine by me. I might buy it myself. I was a big fan of his. Shame he went and got himself shot in real life.” He chuckles to himself and moves on in the aisle.

Bellamy can see Clarke retreating into herself. Instinctively, although he’s still angry at her, he grabs her hand and squeezes.

She squeezes back. Then her head comes up and she looks out the storefront window.

Some part of him is very attuned to her sense of danger. His hand is on his gun immediately, and he looks where she looks. “What?”

She’s frowning. “I thought I heard a camera.” And he scans the street, but sees nothing, no one suspicious, no one looking at them. Only a few old retired couples walking around.

Before he can say anything, she’s moving. Out of the store, leaving their groceries behind. He drops his basket and follows her.

She’s rooted to the sidewalk when he joins her, looking pale.

“What’d you see?” he asks. She shakes her head, slowly. Still, now his hackles are raised and it’s hard to back off. He puts his hand on her back.

“Let’s get out of here.”

They collect the rest of their groceries and load up the Rover.

On the drive back, he watches her from the corner of his eye. She stares down at her clockface soulmark. He tries to figure out her expression. He can’t.

When he’s turning through the gate into Green Farms, she says, “I haven’t met my second soulmate yet.”

He smiles bitterly, resting his forearms on the steering wheel as he drives up the dirt road. “Obviously.”

“I’m just saying, nothing has to change between us.”

Yet. Before today, he’d thought she only had one soulmark, same as him, both soulmates dead, and—he didn’t know what he’d thought, but it certainly wasn’t this feeling in his chest now. Like time is running out.

“I wonder who your soulmate is,” Bellamy muses aloud. “Could be anyone. A CEO. A socialite. A singer. Maybe even a _regular person_ , if they’re lucky.”

“Stop it, Bellamy.”

He knows he’s being childish but can’t bring himself to shut up. “No, I’m serious. You should ask the milkman to show you his wrist next time he delivers. Just to be sure he’s not the love of your life.”

She crosses her arms and looks out the window. If it were anyone else, they’d probably snap at him by now. But Clarke’s patience for his bullshit is infinite. Yet another reason why he doesn’t deserve her.

He parks, and they unload supplies from the back of the Rover and bring it into the house in a rather tense fashion. Then they drive back to the cottage and unload their own groceries. She asks him a few things, and he snaps at her, and he catches the look on her face as he turns away—her eyebrows raised, lips thin.

He goes to close the Rover’s back door, but she catches his arm. He turns to look back, only for her to surge forward and kiss him.

It jolts him a little. Clarke takes advantage of his surprise, pushing him back a step, his back hitting the Rover. He feels like she’s trying to tell him something with her lips.

When she slides her hands up his chest he gets with the program.

He picks her up around the waist and pivots, places her on the edge of the Rover’s open back, where they’ve just taken the supplies out. She tugs him forward by the belt loops, and he catches her wrist, wrenching it away before she can touch him more. Out in the open? Really?

They still, breathing hard, staring at each other. She’s got a game here, he thinks. To make him forget that he’s angry.

Her eyes are a dark, stormy blue like the ocean, her sunspun hair pulled into a messy ponytail. Her chest heaves as she watches him. Her lips slightly parted and swollen from their kiss. In this moment Bellamy cannot fathom why the universe decided she wouldn’t be his.

He presses two fingers into the pulse of her wrist. “Who do you want to fuck you?” he asks quietly, in a voice he doesn’t quite recognize as his own. “Me, or your _soulmate_?” He digs his fingers in a little more, right into the clock face soulmark.

Her pulse goes wild under his fingers. “You.” Clarke’s voice is husky. With her free hand, she caresses his jaw in a way that drives him a little wild. “Is that all you wanted to hear?”

No. He wants to hear her scream his name. Only his. He doesn’t say that, though. When she takes hold of his collar and tugs, he follows her lead obligingly, letting her pull him into the Rover, on top of her. It’s several degrees cooler in here, and dark.

She loops her arms around his neck. “Let’s forget about the soulmarks.”

“I can’t do that,” he replies. He puts his hand on her neck. “You said you wanted your second soulmark to be me, right?”

Clarke nods, her gaze dark. “So much.”

“Then you could’ve just asked me for one.”

Then he gently bites the delicate skin of her throat and sucks hard.

She doesn’t expect it, he can tell from the bucking of her hips against his, the startled gasp that’s knocked from her lips, the rake of her fingernails against his back. He keeps the suction up and when he lets go, he’s satisfied to see the skin deeply reddened.

He only gets to see it a second, though, because then Clarke drags his mouth back to hers.

And well, the back of the Rover isn’t exactly the most comfortable place for a fuck, but they get on their knees and make it work.

—

The next morning, they head downstairs to the bathroom to brush their teeth together. They still when they see each other in the mirror.

Bellamy’s viciously delighted to see the dark bruises stark against her pale throat. But he can see now that she’d left a few on him, too. He has to laugh under his breath at the sight.

They match, for once in their lives.

Clarke reaches for her tube of concealer, holding his gaze in the mirror, and he watches silently as she dabs it on her second soulmark, as she must have done every day for the last many years. He waits for her to do the same for those hickeys.

She doesn’t.

—

A few days later, Bellamy is helping Monty’s dad load a supply truck full of trays of vegetable starters for the store when he gets a text from, of all people, Murphy.

 _I thought you said you and Clarke Griffin weren’t banging_?

Bellamy’s literally about to block his number—seriously, why send him this?—when he realizes there’s a photo attached.

It’s a photo from a few days ago, in the village, taken from just outside the store. Bellamy’s got his cap tugged low, and Clarke’s hair is in its ponytail it was in that day, but the reason he winces is because he’s holding Clarke’s hand. It was right after she’d seen that poster of her father.

Someone had snuck a photo of them after all. And posted it on the internet. Great.

“What’s wrong?” Monty’s father says, and peeks around his shoulder. “Ah.”

Bellamy pockets his phone. “Let’s finish loading up.”

“I can take it from here,” the older man responds, a gentleness in his voice. “Why don’t you go take a break?”

Go to Clarke, he means. Bellamy decides to take the advice. It’s probably a good idea to get ahead of this. Clarke gets upset enough on her own when people spring paparazzi photos on her.

She’d gone for lunch, so he heads to the cottage.

Clarke wheels around in the kitchen when he walks in. He frowns. The TV is off. The only reason this is noteworthy is because it was on ten seconds ago. He’d heard the indistinct voice of a newscaster as he came up to the door.

Clarke is looking at him with a steely, frantic look in her eye. He knows that look. His gaze falls on the remote control on the table. He goes for it.

Clarke practically dives for it at the same time, but he’s faster. He snatches it up, and Clarke actually sidesteps in front of the TV and spreads out her arms.

“Bellamy, _wait_ ,” she begins, her voice like a whip. He ignores her and jabs the power button on the remote. Unfortunately, the batteries on the stupid thing are close to dying, so he really does need her to move for the TV to come on.

He glares.

“Bellamy—”

“Get the hell out of my way, Clarke.”

“I can explain.”

“You can explain after I see whatever you’re hiding. You know you can’t keep it from me forever.” She’s silent. “If it’s already on TV, I can search it up on my phone, too. You want me to do that instead?”

She lowers her arms in defeat. He turns the TV on.

The first thing he sees is the headline. BREAKING: POLARIS HAS SECRETLY CONTINUED ARKADIA’S SOULMARKS RESEARCH.

He catches the reporter at the end of her spiel.

“—reached out to Polaris about this, but no official statement has been made. But it’s only a matter of time before Clarke Griffin will have to come out of hiding and provide answers to the very concerning questions raised by these revelations.”

The newscaster turns to a new topic. Bellamy mutes it and turns slowly to Clarke.

“Bellamy—”

“You’re still looking into the research that got your mom thrown in prison.”

She hesitates, but then her resolve seems to harden, and she lifts her chin, eyes blazing defiantly. “Yes. And I’m not going to apologize for it. Jaha and I have been following every rule in the book. We’re looking for patterns in pre-existing data on soulmates. We’re examining soulmark tissue from cadavers. There’s no ethics violations, so you can stop looking at me like that.”

He can feel himself growing angrier by the second. “It’s not about that! It’s about optics, Clarke! People are going to look at this and think you’re doing the same thing Abby and Dr. Singh did. They’re going to look at you _hard_. You’re going to have to answer to them. Are you ready for that? So soon, after everything? Do you trust _Lexa_ not to throw you under the bus?”

She looks away. He shakes his head.

“You need to stop this, Clarke. Right now. Call Jaha and tell him to shut it all down.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

He does, but it’s not worth it. He knows she thinks having answers would help her move forward. He can’t relate. Clearcut answers would just rub it in his face, all the ways in which he was inadequate to love Clarke Griffin.

But, he can tell from the look in her eye that nothing will stop her. That’s Clarke, all right. She’ll get attached to a goal and nothing will stop her. He finds himself growing suspicious.

“What else are you hiding from me?”

“Nothing!” She chews her lip, brows furrowing. “I can’t think of anything else.”

The fact that she’s genuinely trying to remember if she’s been lying about other things is both exasperating and also ultimately what convinces him that she’s not. His anger dissolves into tiredness.

He shows her the picture Murphy had sent him on his phone. “Well, we have another problem.”

She takes a look. “Oh, no. Bellamy, my soulmark.”

He looks back at it. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the camera had caught Clarke’s right wrist. The clock face is clear as day in the photo. Her cover is blown.

His stomach drops. The one time someone had gotten a photo of her in these past few months and it’s when her second soulmark was unconcealed. This is entirely his fault. If he hadn’t wiped the makeup away…

“No wonder my phone’s been blowing up with texts,” Clarke says. She looks at him, a grim look in her eye. “Bellamy, I think it’s time we went home.”

He was afraid she would say that, even though he knows she’s right. They’ve already spent so long here. She has to clean up whatever’s happening at Polaris. And now that photo is out. It’s only a matter of time before the press follows the trail here. They can’t do that to Monty’s parents, not when they’ve been so hospitable, so welcoming these past six months.

He sighs. “I’ll start packing.”

—

It’s Clarke’s job to let Hannah know they’re leaving within the week. It’s a little sooner than she’d hoped—she’d wanted the whole summer here—but she supposes they’ve taken advantage of the Greens’ hospitality too long. Then she calls Monty and lets him know, too.

“Well, I was still right,” he points out. “The paparazzi didn’t find you at the farm, did they? They found you in the _village_.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “I guess you’re right.” She thanks him again, and ends the call, and stares at her phone. The thing is, she’s so sure the person wasn’t just a paparazzo.

A chill runs up her spine again as she thinks of it. Out the window of the grocery store, she’d heard the faintest click. She’d looked up and seen a flash of blonde hair, a blue blur in the crowd. She’d gone outside to look for her, but she was no longer there.

But in the split instant Clarke had seen this person from inside the shop, she could swear there was something very familiar about her outfit. She’d had to Google it later to confirm her own suspicions. It was a blue henley and jacket combo, Clarke’s outfit during her one and only movie role. That woman who had taken a picture of her had been wearing an exact replica.

Clarke had told herself this was nothing but an overzealous fan. She’s run into those before. Which is why she hadn’t told Bellamy when he asked. But she can’t shake it, and it makes her look over her shoulder every time she sets foot outside the cottage.

—

Their remaining days at the farm go by too fast. Suddenly it’s the day before they’re planning to leave. Clarke and Bellamy help out the Greens one last time in the greenhouse with picking berries that afternoon. There’s a sense of ending to all this. She’s going to miss it. The heavy lifting, the sweat on her back, even the dirt under her fingernails. She’s going to miss feeling anonymous.

“Clarke,” Hannah calls from the entrance, drawing her attention. “Someone’s here asking for you.”

Clarke sets down her basket. Paparazzi have already found her, then. She opens her mouth to tell Hannah to send them away, but Hannah adds, “I think you’ll want to see them.”

Her voice sounds very strange.

“Why?” Clarke asks slowly. “Who is it?”

“Finn Collins.”

Clarke’s mouth drops open. _Finn_?

Without really being completely aware of it, she’s moving forward, past Hannah. She feels Bellamy at her back, following.

There’s a sleek black luxury sedan parked out front, looking starkly out of place. Finn’s leaning against it, and when he sees her, he pushes off.

She comes closer and something in his eyes is crazy, desperate. “I found you,” he breathes, and Clarke’s brow furrows.

“Finn, what—”

He yanks up his sleeve, and Clarke’s eyes fall helplessly to his wrist, where a clock face with the hands striking twelve is clear as day.

—

An hour later, Clarke enters the cottage for the last time.

She takes in the kitchen, which she and Bellamy had scrubbed clean in preparation for leaving, wanting to leave it spotless for their hosts. So many memories here. And upstairs, too…

She drags her feet up.

Bellamy’s waiting for her in the bedroom they’ve shared for months, sitting on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees. Their suitcases lie on the floor in front of him, open, mostly packed. He doesn’t say anything, but sadness rolls off his hunched shoulders.

They knew this would happen someday. Neither of them had expected it to be so soon.

“Well?” Bellamy asks when she doesn’t speak right away.

“I sent him away,” Clarke replies. She’d chewed him out for even coming here when he could have called, and he’d said she wasn’t answering his calls.

She couldn’t really deny that. She’s been ignoring a lot of calls while she was here. Finn went on to explain that he couldn’t wait for her to call back after seeing that photo, that he _had_ to see her. He’d pulled some strings, asked around, used his vast resources to figure out where she was. And came for her.

“I knew there was a reason I felt so connected to you,” he’d said, gazing at her. “Don’t tell me you didn’t feel it too.”

She had looked away, still in shock. She’d thought back, analyzing all her previous interactions with Finn Collins in a new light.

As a teenager, she’d practically been half in love with him, but so had half the people her age back then. That was in the way people get obsessed with their favourite characters. She hadn’t thought much of it at the time, because why should she, but there must’ve been something more.

Then she thought about how she’d given him her number when he’d asked, despite the fact that she rarely handed it out to socialites. She hadn’t really known why she was doing it at the time, either. Just that Finn was entertaining in some way. It wasn’t that deep.

But according to fate, maybe it actually was.

Finn was still waiting for her to answer, and she’d said, “You need to leave, Finn. I can’t just up and go yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because I need to pack my things and say some goodbyes. I’ve been here half a year, Finn. There’s a lot I have to do before I leave.” Finn had stayed rooted to the spot.

“You’re my soulmate, Clarke. I’ve waited a long time to get to know you.”

“Then you can wait a little longer.”

So Finn had left, with one last lingering look at her.

And now she’s here, with Bellamy.

Clarke thinks about what Dr. Singh had told her about her research a long time ago. _There’s a sort of stepwise cascade that occurs to put them down one road or another, and after that they can’t go back. Their fate has been determined_. Clarke has to wonder which road she went down that led her to Finn Collins. And why she didn’t pick the road that would’ve led to Bellamy.

She studies him and tries to compare him and Finn. There’s really no comparison. She hardly even knows Finn. Bellamy, she’s known her whole life.

She takes a deep breath and considers something terrifying. “I don’t have to go with him.”

“But you should,” Bellamy says, bitterly. “Because I can’t be to you what he is, Clarke.” He shakes his head. “I should’ve known he was your soulmate.”

“What’s that mean? You don’t even like him.”

“That’s my point.”

She sighs. He watches her.

“You don’t seem very happy for someone who’s soulmate turned out to be a famous movie star.”

“I hardly even know him. You know I’m not that shallow.”

“Your soulmark says something different.”

She knows he’s in a mood because he’s sad, but she can’t just take it anymore.

“You’re acting like any of this was in my control. That’s not fair, Bellamy.” Her voice cracks, and his expression softens. “I didn’t want this to happen.”

She looks away from him, out the window, and then he’s off the bed, standing in front of her, his hands on her shoulders.

“Clarke. I’m sorry. I know. I know.”

She puts her hands on his, stares into his solemn brown eyes. Behind him, the suitcases they packed mock her. “I don’t want to go,” she whispers, childishly. “Bellamy, _I don’t want to go_.”

She doesn’t even know what she means—that she doesn’t want to leave this farm, doesn’t want to go to the company, doesn’t want to go face the press, doesn’t want to go to Finn. Maybe all those things. She wants to stay in this dream life with Bellamy forever.

Perhaps he understands, because he leans his forehead against hers, and they both draw in ragged breaths.

Maybe if she didn’t have a second soulmark she could imagine trying with him. But she does. The universe gave her another, and even then it wasn’t Bellamy. Fate has given her yet another clear warning that she and Bellamy were not meant to be, not even now.

Lexa and her—didn’t work out. Lexa broke her heart, and her betrayal still hurts to this day. Clarke tries to imagine a similar betrayal from Bellamy. She cannot imagine him doing such a thing.

Maybe it wouldn’t happen like that. Maybe _she_ would betray _him_ instead. Maybe one of her lies or secrets would become one too many and he’d leave and she’d have to learn to live without him. But Bellamy’s so ingrained in the DNA of her life; she can’t cut him out without cutting herself to pieces too.

God, her life is a mess. If only she’d been more careful out in the village, that girl wouldn’t have gotten a picture of her. She could have lived in this dream a little while longer.

“I met your friend Raven at your wedding,” Clarke blurts suddenly, and Bellamy pulls away. “She had a raven soulmark.”

He waits, clearly wondering where this came from.

“I think I know her soulmate.” Bellamy blinks, and Clarke hugs herself. “There was a TA, back at my university… but I didn’t tell her.” Which is unheard of. It’s socially expected, really, that if you know someone’s soulmate, you tell them.

“Why not?” Bellamy asks quietly.

“Because maybe Raven was with someone already. Maybe she was already happy and in love.”

Bellamy scoffs. “Trust me, she’s not. Wick, Zeke, Murphy—every relationship she’s had ended in disaster. Mostly self-inflicted.”

The way he says it makes her laugh, and _fuck_ , she’s going to miss talking to him every day for hours. She forces herself to focus. “The point is, I thought, why should I interfere with their lives? Why should I try to break the relationships they’ve already got? Why not just leave them in peace?”

A long pause. Then, somberly: “I wouldn’t have told them, either.”

They stand there for a long minute. Completely silent, an acknowledgment between them of things that could’ve been, had things been different. Hard choice, hard choice. Weren’t soulmarks supposed to make everything easy?

Emotions threaten to overwhelm her. And as has become habit, she reaches for him.

He startles a bit when she presses her lips to his. But he snaps out of it quickly, turning his head away.

“Clarke, don’t.” He sounds anguished.

She drops her hands to her sides, knowing she probably looks pathetic right now, trying to come on to him.

A muscle in his jaw jumps, his face still turned away from her as he speaks again. “You have a soulmate, Clarke. You know I don’t like it but I’m not going to ruin that, I’m not going to ruin _us_ —”

“I know.”

“Then don’t ask me to.”

“One more time,” she says, and starts to cry. “One more time, and then I’ll go with him. I’ll go be with my soulmate. Please, just one more time with you.”

Her words are barely even audible by the end; her voice has lost steam. She needs a goodbye, even if they are only separating so they can always be together.

And he must need it too. Because then he’s in her space again, taking her face in his hands, something desperate in his eyes. “Alright,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “Alright. One more time, with you.”

She takes his hand from her face, interlaces his fingers with her own. As their mouths meet again, Bellamy’s hands creep under her shirt, skimming up her stomach, to trace her bra. He can always tell which one she’s wearing by touching it under her clothes, and then he knows exactly how to unclasp it. This one she had bought recently, is blue and lacy, and hooks from the front. He makes quick work of it before Clarke can help him. It’s the most ridiculous, pathetic thought, but Clarke decides right there that she won’t wear this bra ever again, because then it will only ever have been touched by him.

There’s a strange reverence with which they touch each other, their journey to the bed. A sense of finality to the way they kiss, to the way they slowly, slowly take their clothes off. Trying to make this last as long as possible.

They make out in bed for as long as Clarke can stand. His mouth is so familiar now. She’s gotten used to kissing him, knowing the exact angle she needs to tilt her head for them to fit perfectly together. She’s gotten used to putting her hand to his jaw, feeling it work under her hand when they’re really going at it.

Bellamy starts to crawl down her body, but she stops him. “No,” she whispers. “I just want you inside me tonight.”

She settles on her back, pulling him on top of her, because she wants it like this. She spreads her knees, welcoming him to settle between them. He props himself up on his hands to look down at her. She nods to him.

They sink together again, one last time.

He buries his face into her neck and rocks into her, setting a rhythm, but no, she finds. No, it’s not _slow_ enough. She digs her fingers into his hips, stilling him until he understands, and yes, this is better.

She wants it to be slow even though every part of her screams at her to make it fast. She wants to feel, truly feel, every inch of him as he pushes in to the hilt and out of her.

Because this is her only chance to commit him to memory. Her eyes fall shut, heels dig into his sides, her fingers into his hair. She tries to urge him deeper, to get him to burn an imprint of himself into her body. She never wants to forget the exquisite ache of her best friend inside of her, warm and big and stretching her out and—she has to consciously drag a breath into her lungs, because her mind has completely forgotten that her body needed anything but him.

She starts crying anew because, god, she both loves and hates how good it feels. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever feel this good again.

Bellamy’s fingers slip between them, brushing against where she’s most sensitive. She tries to pull them away. “N—no, no no no, not yet,” she yammers near-incoherently. “I don’t want it to be over.”

He kisses her neck. “It won’t be over, Clarke.”

He brings her over the edge, and she crashes down in waves, but he doesn’t stop, he keeps pushing into her with those same slow, restrained movements, until she feels it building again. He’s trembling with effort, and she can feel him start to lose control, and she lets him, because she’s tortured him long enough.

She wants to watch him unravel, so she tugs at his hair until he lifts his head from the crook of her neck. He meets her gaze. His brown eyes are wide and shiny and hungry. She clenches around him and watches his lashes flutter.

“I thought you didn’t want this to be over,” he groans. She doesn’t relent, digging her heels into his lower back, urging him on until his control shatters completely.

Afterwards, when they’re lying next to each other, she blinks up at the ceiling and whispers, “It had to be over sometime.”

—

The next day, while loading up the Rover with their things, Bellamy gets a call from Eligius. They want a meeting with him at corporate headquarters as soon as possible. Great.

He agrees to a set time and date, then gets off the phone when Clarke leaves the cottage, shutting the door slowly behind her. Her face is expressionless. He imagines he’s the same.

They climb into the vehicle wordlessly, and the silence in their long trip back home is a stark contrast to the trip that had brought them here. But a lot has changed.

He finds himself side-eyeing Clarke often during the drive. She rubs at her right wrist a lot. She’s stopped putting concealer on it.

About forty-five minutes before they arrive home, the Rover breaks down on the highway.

Bellamy supposes he should’ve expected this. It’s not the first time. The thing is damn old. He hops out to pop open the hood. Clarke comes to stand next to him while he pokes around fruitlessly. After he tries a few things, he knows it’s hopeless. He’s going to have to call someone to tow them.

“That’s okay. They’ll fix it,” Clarke says encouragingly. He wipes the sweat from his eyes.

“The last time this happened, Raven said this thing was on its last legs. It’s not getting fixed. It’s junk.”

“I’ll get it remodelled for you,” Clarke says, but he shakes his head, angry.

“I don’t want it. It did what it needed to do while I had it. Some things you have to leave in the past.”

She’s silent for a long moment. “How long do you think it’ll take the tow truck to get here?”

He shrugs. “A couple hours, probably.”

She chews her lip. He knows why she’s worried. She’d had an emergency meeting with Polaris board members set for later today, to talk strategy for how to manage the press.

“Go,” he tells her while he dials the automobile association. “I’ll wait for the tow truck. You get someone to pick you up.”

Her voice becomes low, desperate. “I can’t leave you.”

Why does it always feel these days like they’re having two conversations at once? “I’ll be fine.”

She stares at him a second more. He stares back, unflinching.

Finally, Clarke pulls out her phone and he half-listens to her talk to Kane, at the same time that he gets connected with the automobile association.

When they’re done with their respective phone calls, they climb back into the Rover and sit in silence until Kane’s sleek SUV pulls up to the curb. Clarke looks at him one last time as she opens the passenger side door.

“Bellamy—”

“ _Go_ , Clarke.”

“I was just going to say,” she whispers. “Thank you.”

That hits him like a sledgehammer to the chest. Even if he doesn’t know exactly what she’s thanking him for.

Clarke doesn’t explain, either. She just gets out of the vehicle.

The urge to reach for her is almost too strong to resist. He tightens his grip on the wheel and reminds himself why they are doing this. To stop themselves from ruining each other.

But, as Clarke walks away from him, he can’t shake the feeling that it’s far too late for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pros of leaving a comment: golden opportunity to beat me up, it’ll make me happy, i’ll adore you even as you punch my metaphorical teeth in
> 
> cons: ??????
> 
> (stay tuned for part 3, im working on it!)  
> @wellsjahasghost on tumblr


	3. determination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t see what’s so wrong about us being in each other’s lives.”
> 
> “You’re soulmated,” Bellamy says, and it’s exactly what Clarke feared his reply would be. She waves a hand as dismissively as she can.
> 
> “You can still have _friends_ when you’re soulmated.”
> 
> He watches her with dark eyes. “You can’t have friends like us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *blows kiss to the sky* to everyone who has left comments, messaged me capslock death threats, talked this story up, shared it with others or otherwise supported yours truly <3 you make it worth it for me, and i’m crossing my fingers this last part makes it worth it for you.
> 
> *blows another kiss to the sky* to Sjaan @readymachine for combing through my typo-infested drafts and being an all-around amazing beta reader <3

Clarke drags her feet through the lavish door of the Griffin mansion. She barely has the presence of mind to thank the doorman as she wanders to the base of the staircase, then sinks down to the bottom step. She kicks off her professional black heels and leans back on her hands.

One week. She’s been back one week, and it already feels like it’s been a year.

The evening she left Bellamy behind, she’d barely made it to her meeting at Polaris with the board. It’d been decided there would have to be a press conference for damage control.

The next day Clarke had caught a flight to visit her mother, who was gaunter than last time they’d seen each other. Before Clarke could say anything, Abby cut through the pleasantries.

“I saw the news. I heard about what you’re doing at the company—”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Clarke said firmly.

“Clarke, you don’t want to end up in here—”

“Why not?” Clarke said cheerily. “What’s so scary about it? Since you’re clearly doing just _fine_. Aren’t you?”

Her words were a challenge. Abby was quiet for a moment. Then she asked Clarke how her time on the farm had been. They chatted amicably about the work Clarke had done there. Any time Abby seemed like she was going to ask about her second soulmark, Bellamy, or the company, Clarke just had to ask how things in prison were going to shut it down and they’d steer back to small talk. Rinse and repeat.

It was sort of a hellish conversation.

When their time was up, Clarke hugged her goodbye and waved as she was led away. She waited until she was back in the car to dissolve into tears.

Once she was cried out, she got back to business. She set up a meeting with her faculty to confirm she was coming back in the fall and then headed to Polaris headquarters for the press conference preparations.

Today, she had stood back while Lexa made a statement to the press, her eyes lowered to her shoes while camera flashes went off in her face. When Lexa was finished, she stepped up to the podium and said her piece, about how the research was important and that they were going about it ethically.

Voices rose from the audience of journalists, questions on top of questions.

“What’s the end goal of this research?”

“Will you be pursuing more human trials at this time?”

“Do you have a personal investment in this work?”

That last one was asked quite a lot. Clarke answered the questions as best as she can, sticking to the answers Polaris had prepared. The weight of accusing stares had followed her back inside the building afterwards.

Now she’s home, and for the first time in a week she doesn’t have a thing scheduled tomorrow. Which means maybe she can finally relax and call Bellamy. They’ve only corresponded by text for the past week. It’s disorienting, to go from spending nearly every waking moment with him, to barely knowing what he’s up to. She misses him, but reminds herself that this is life now.

She takes her phone out of her purse, but then the butler comes up to her and quietly tells her a visitor arrived for her several hours ago and is waiting in the parlour.

She already knows who it is. She squares her shoulders and thanks him before walking in.

Finn’s already half rising from the couch when she walks in. The way he looks at her is more intense than he did before. Before, it was flirty, mischievous; she could brush it off. She can’t brush it off anymore, because now he looks obsessed.

She shifts uncomfortably.

“Clarke,” he breathes. He runs a hand through his hair, flashing his soulmark—the clock face. It jolts her.

“Why aren’t you covering it up?” she asks as they both sit down. “Haven’t you always covered it up?”

“Why should I, anymore? I found you. No one can pretend to be my soulmate anymore, so it doesn’t matter how many photos people take.” He smiles. “Don’t you think it’s funny we both hid our tattoos from the world? No wonder we’re soulmates.”

Clarke does not smile, and his fades. His eyes narrow. “Do you _want_ me to cover it up?”

“No,” Clarke lies. “No, of course not, Finn.” The words feel wooden from her mouth. He seems to think so too.

“Then you could at _least_ pretend like you were happy to see me.”

“I’m trying, Finn. It’s an adjustment.”

“Yeah, and I get that. It’s an adjustment for me, too.” He pauses. “Except I can’t help but think there’s another reason you’re having trouble adjusting. Bellamy Blake.”

Clarke forces herself to maintain eye contact. Finn, like the rest of the world, has seen the photos of her with Bellamy in the village, holding his hand. It’s kind of irritating that everyone assumes something from this, and even more irritating that for once they’re actually right. She keeps her tone even. “He’s my friend.”

Finn bats this away like an irksome fly. “Yeah? Tell me you didn’t have sex with him, then.”

Clarke’s mouth opens and closes several times at the question. She looks down at her feet. “I can’t tell you that.”

A long pause. Then: “Well, at least tell me it was a mistake.” Silence. “At _least_ tell me you were both drunk, and you did it once and it was really bad and you both laughed it off and decided you were more like brother and sister.”

Clarke drags her gaze back to his. He curses.

“Okay, so the opposite, then. And here I was, not believing the tabloids...” He shakes his head. “Well? Are you still with him?”

Clarke has the urge to say they were never together in the first place, not really. But she’s pretty sure no one would understand what they were. Even she can’t put it into words half the time. So she just settles on, “No.”

“Thank God.”

She frowns. Why is _she_ the only one getting interrogated? “Are _you_ with anyone?”

“I was,” Finn replies. “I broke it off as soon as I heard about you.”

Clarke studies his face, but he shows no signs of regret. She wonders if he feels it inside anyway, though. She wonders if that person he was with is heartbroken. Or if he’s just talking about a fling.

“Did you care about them?” she asks him, her curiosity overpowering her. She needs to know—how _normal_ people feel when they leave someone for their soulmate.

“Of course I do,” Finn replies with a shrug. “And it sucks, but that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of soulmates. We went into it knowing that. Doesn’t everybody?”

Clarke hadn’t gotten the memo on that one. She’d hurtled into a friendship with Bellamy completely blind. Not caring about soulmates or about fate or about the infinite wisdom of the universe tattooed on her wrist. Maybe if she had, she would’ve guarded her heart a little better.

After a long silence, Finn says softly, “I want to get to know you better, Clarke. You’ve got what, almost two months before your school starts up again, right?”

She looks at him sharply; she hadn’t realized he knew the details of her school schedule.

“I have a vacation planned,” Finn tells her. “The Bahamas. A couple of weeks. I was gonna go solo, but now… I want you to come with me.”

Clarke feels rooted to the spot. “I can’t. I have things to do. I have to prepare for school again.”

“Okay, fine. It’s just an offer. Think about it.” He rises from the couch.

But, as he starts to walk out, Clarke begins feeling guilty. Finn left a relationship for her. He’s invested, like any other normal person would be. Does she owe it to both of them to give him a chance?

Besides, Wells was one of the best parts of her life. If the universe says Finn’s on the same level… then shouldn’t she at least explore this? Why does she keep resisting it when logically, she knows it’s the right thing to do?

But even these thoughts don’t change her mind. At least until she realizes— _Bellamy_. Bellamy will be on this vacation, as part of Finn’s detail. She’ll see him every day. At the very least, there’ll be that. And that alone is reason enough to make her open her mouth.

“Wait!”

—

Bellamy has a tiring first week back.

First, he has to wait hours for the tow truck to come, and then the next day he goes to the shop, where he’s told there’s nothing to be done for the Rover.

“In order to get it in working condition again, we’d have to replace pretty much all its parts,” the mechanic tells him. “The money it’ll cost you to revamp this thing could buy you two brand-new luxury vehicles.”

It’s basically what Raven had already told him. Still hurts to have it confirmed. “Can I sell it back to you for parts at least?”

“Even the salvageable parts it has aren’t worth much,” the mechanic says. Bellamy feels somewhat offended by this. “It’s pretty much scrap metal. But we can make you an offer.”

They do. Bellamy takes it and walks away without looking back.

Octavia’s in town visiting their mother with Lincoln, and she offers to help him with car-hunting the next day. He regrets accepting it when he realizes she’s taking it as an opportunity to roast him for going off with Clarke.

“Seriously, what did you think was going to happen?” Octavia demands for the hundredth time as they take yet another truck for a test drive from the dealership. Bellamy makes exasperated eye contact with Lincoln through the rearview mirror. “Even if she didn’t have a second soulmark, in what world would _she_ be happy with someone like us?”

That stings. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We were the _housekeeper’s kids_ , Bell! She’d be laughed off the rich people block if she dated you. No wonder she tried to keep you and her a secret. She was using you for comfort, I hope you get that.”

Lincoln shifts uneasily in the back seat.

“Octavia, that’s enough,” Bellamy growls.

“Isn’t he such an idiot, Lincoln?” Octavia twists in her seat to look at her soulmate. “Tell him what an idiot he is.”

Lincoln, as always when they are arguing, wisely says nothing.

Thankfully, the subject changes. Octavia tells him how their mother has been acting weird lately.

“But supposedly not drinking,” Octavia adds. Bellamy’s hands tighten on the wheel. “I’m not sure I believe her, Bell. You have to do something.”

In the end, Bellamy ends up buying a sensible, silver sedan from a secondhand dealership. It has no personality whatsoever, but it doesn’t matter. It just has to get him where he needs to go, and most importantly it won’t hurt when he has to get rid of it. He’s tired of putting his heart into everything.

Then he packs a bag and comes unannounced to his mother’s door, because Bellamy knows he has to be the one to confront her. He mentally prepares for it.

His mother is on her way out for work. She’s cagey at the door, but eventually lets him in. This is the first time Bellamy’s seen his mother since leaving half a year ago. He can tell right away she’s hiding something because she doesn’t hug him, doesn’t say much at all.

She somewhat reluctantly leaves for work, and Bellamy searches her whole apartment top to bottom. He only finds one travel-size bottle of whiskey in a cabinet in the bathroom, but he pours it out in the sink despite knowing Aurora is going to scream at him later for it.

And when she comes home, they get _into_ it. His mother angry that he snooped around her apartment, that _for Pete’s sake, it’s just a tiny bottle_! Bellamy loses his temper a little bit, tells her she needs to get some help, except he doesn’t say it in a nice way. She accuses him once again of being like his father. The screaming match is probably heard from two floors up. Octavia arrives just when Aurora throws her hands up and storms to her bedroom. Bellamy doesn’t follow her, although Octavia does. Instead, he works off his anger by cleaning the kitchen.

Eventually Octavia comes out, glaring at him. “You were _way_ harsh. You made her cry.”

Bellamy pauses in the middle of sweeping the floor. That does make him feel bad. Still… He gestures to the emptied bottle of whiskey. “You’re the one who asked me to do something. There. I did something.”

“Not _like that_.”

Bellamy doesn’t respond. He silently listens to his sister chew him out for being a jackass for the next ten minutes, while he finishes sweeping the floor. He regrets making his mother cry. He regrets that Octavia had to see it. But regardless of how blunt he was about it, the wake-up call was needed. If Bellamy has to be the monster in order to keep his family alive, then he will.

The next day Octavia and Lincoln travel back home, and although he loves his sister dearly, he sort of breathes a sigh of relief.

His mother doesn’t speak to him for days, although he comes back to her apartment with groceries since the fridge was damn near empty. Then he does another grocery run, and shows up unannounced at the fire station in town with as many boxes of cookies and frozen dinners as he can fit into the trunk of his car. Gina’s old colleagues remember him well, and welcome him and the gifts warmly.

“We were just talking about how we miss when you used to bring us snacks,” Gina’s best friend tells him, after a big hug. He stays at the station for an hour, where they tease him, and ask him how he’s doing, and thankfully don’t bring up Clarke Griffin. They show him the big commemorative plaque Gina had received posthumously, now displayed prominently in the foyer.

“She got it at the big city awards dinner this year,” they tell him. “We were going to invite you, but, well…”

He’d been gone. With Clarke. Guilt threatens to overtake him again, at least until one of them says, gently, “She’d have rather you were on break taking care of yourself than there, I bet.”

Everyone chimes in with their agreement, and hell, he does not deserve this treatment. He has to excuse himself quickly after that before he has a full breakdown.

Then he has to meet the real estate agent. To sell his and Gina’s house. After that meeting he really does have a breakdown, alone in the master bedroom.

Throughout all this, he barely talks to Clarke. Texts here and there. He sees her on TV, dealing with the press. She looks as worn-out as he feels. He doesn’t want to bog her down with his problems too, so he tries to keep the interactions to a minimum.

He really fucking misses her, though.

Then his meeting with Eligius comes up, the one he’d set while still at the farm. No one has told him exactly what it’s about.

He decides to ask Raven if she’s heard anything, so he can have some idea of what to expect. He has no clue what it might be otherwise. He’d given everyone appropriate notice he was going on leave. People had been understanding at the time. His soulmate had just died, after all. What could he have done wrong?

“Finn fired you,” Raven tells him bluntly.

“Come again?”

“Don’t act like it’s a surprise,” Raven snorts. “We all saw the photos of you and Clarke holding hands on the little _vacation_ you took together _for half a year_. Do you really think he wants one of his soulmate’s old flames around all the time?”

“We weren’t like that.”

“Then what, friends with benefits?”

“No,” he says, annoyed. “We’re friends. Period.”

“Friends who had sex on a regular basis. Don’t deny it. Clarke told him.”

He’s quiet for a second. Clarke told Finn? Why? “It wasn’t a regular thing.”

Raven actually laughs. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?” Yeah, he’s well aware. She scoffs at his silence. “Well, _whatever it was_ , it’s over. You know that, right?”

Her voice is angry, and he gives her a second look.

Her past relationships were always a mess, and she was very close to Finn. And for Finn to tell her something that intimate… Bellamy suddenly suspects he’s not the only one unhappy with who Clarke’s soulmate turned out to be.

Mind spinning, he goes to Eligius corporate headquarters in his best white collared shirt and pants. He remembers to iron this time.

In the underground parking lot at Eligius, he finds himself checking a gossip website. It’s a little pathetic, but he hasn’t seen Clarke in two days, and he’s gotten used to seeing her all the time. He’ll take anything, even paparazzi photos.

And there are. Photos of Clarke’s and Finn’s soulmarks side by side. Finn’s clearly done hiding his, as well. The gossip sites are having a field day. Explosive headlines about how Clarke got a second soulmate, and _how perfect is this match? No sightings of them together yet, but we’re already swooning_!

It’s like the speculation about her and Bellamy has already been forgotten; this news is too exciting not to talk about, apparently. Plenty of commenters sneer at Clarke and her past mistakes, how she doesn’t deserve Finn—Bellamy puts his phone away then because it makes his blood boil. They’ve got it backwards.

He takes the elevator up to the office of one of his superiors at Eligius, Pike, who sits him down and tells him the news. It’s exactly what Raven had said.

“Collins didn’t give a reason. We asked if there was something lacking in your performance and he said no.”

Well, he can breathe a sigh of relief at that at least.

“I suspect,” Pike adds, “it was for personal reasons.”

Bellamy looks up sharply to find the older man studying him, hands clasped on the table. Everyone knows Finn and Clarke are soulmates now from the tabloids, from the press. And Bellamy hates that even at work it’s following him.

He supposes he now knows how Clarke has felt her whole life.

“You’re an asset to this organization, Bellamy,” Pike says after a long moment. “I’m sorry executive protection hasn’t worked out, but there’s plenty of other places to take your career at Eligius. We’d be glad to have you again in one of the paramilitary units.”

Bellamy had done paramilitary training under Pike a few years ago, and had been on one of the units for a few weeks. But he’d left quickly; the work was dangerous, and often turned his stomach. They’d been contracted out to governments and intelligence agencies, transporting criminals, guarding weapons, protecting high risk assets.

So no, he’s not keen on a repeat. But other than that thought, truthfully, Bellamy has no idea where to go from here. His six months away have completely disoriented him from the act of living.

Pike clearly notices his indecisiveness. “You can think about it. In the meantime, over the summer, there’s a short contract open at a detention center for a guard position. If you’re interested in keeping some inmates in line. But you have to decide on this one fast,” he warns. “It starts in a few days. You have to pass your routine competency test first, so there’s a time crunch. But I’ll happily give you a recommendation if you want it.”

Bellamy hesitates for a moment. If he accepts, he’s not going to have time to see Clarke before leaving.

But that’s no excuse. He nods. “Thank you, sir.”

—

The first thing Clarke notices on the flight to the Bahamas is that Bellamy is not part of the detail. She keeps thinking that perhaps he’s just on a part of the plane she can’t see.

Roan, who’s come on the vacation with her, seems to hear her unsaid question somehow. Quietly, he tells her Finn’s chief of security let him go.

“Did he do something wrong?” she asks anxiously. If Bellamy got in trouble with Eligius, he certainly hadn’t told her. Roan gives her a bored look.

“I can’t be sure, but I’d say he did at least _one_ thing Finn didn’t like.”

Clarke turns red and leaves.

She marches straight up to Finn, though, who’s enjoying a glass of wine by the window. She plops into the seat across from him and folds her arms.

“You _fired_ Bellamy.”

He blinks lazily at her and doesn’t deny it. “So?”

“Just because of _me_? You know how hard it is for him to get jobs because of me and now you let him go?” She’s practically spitting fire.

“You sound like you need a drink.” He pours her some wine and pushes it towards her. She doesn’t take it. “Eligius asked me if anything was wrong with his work and I told them not at all. In fact, I specifically said he was a great bodyguard. Even though I could tell half the time he wanted to strangle me.” He chuckles a bit at her expression. “I’m _joking_ , princess. I didn’t say that last part. I just told his boss I didn’t need his service anymore. Are you happy now?”

Clarke’s not. He shrugs.

“Do you really think he would want to work for me now anyway? I’m surprised he didn’t resign first, honestly.”

Clarke blinks, having not considered that angle. But she should have. Why would Bellamy want to sit back and watch Finn and Clarke get to know each other? She knows _she_ wouldn’t have. In fact, she didn’t. She’d practically ran away after Bellamy married Gina. Maybe Finn did them all a favour after all.

She picks up her wine and drinks the whole thing in one go.

—

When they land, she shoots Bellamy a text, asking whether he found himself another job yet. He doesn’t respond right away.

Meanwhile, Finn whisks her away to the resort.

Clarke tries to enjoy herself. It is a beautiful beach resort, and the views are gorgeous, and she knows the only views she’ll be getting when she goes back to school is X-ray angles. But she just cannot shake off the sad mood.

While sunning on the pool deck, her phone buzzes, and she snatches it up so fast she scares off a bird that had been settled nearby. It’s Bellamy, telling her he’s gotten a job in a detention centre. A long way away from home, even when she gets back.

A lump grows in her throat. She types back several cheery emojis that are pretty much the opposite of what she feels inside. Tries to think of something else to say.

Finn swims over to the edge.

“Not to sound like a boomer, but get off your phone,” he says, splashing her with water. She goes rigid, having not expected it. The water’s icy. He guffaws at her expression.

“You need to loosen up.” He pulls her into the water.

“ _Finn—_!”

it’s too late. She’s in, and it’s cold as hell. She shoves his chest.

“You’re such an ass!” She looks down. Her phone’s now at the bottom of the pool. “ _And_ you drowned my phone!”

He’s laughing at her. “Relax. I’ll buy you a new one tomorrow. That one looks like it’s seen better days anyway.”

She holds herself rigidly in the water, and he grabs her shoulders and pulls her in further. This little—

He kicks away from her before she can shove him again, splashing her even more. He’s so annoying.

“You look like you’re ready to kill me, princess,” he muses, settling on his back with his hands behind his head. He winks. “My last words would be thank you.”

He’s a relentless flirt, and it breaks down her anger a bit. And she would never admit it, but the water feels good on her sun-heated skin. She sinks further into the water with a sigh.

“That’s right, Clarke,” Finn says, watching her. “Let yourself enjoy life. I promise it won’t hurt.”

—

She and Finn have a gigantic beachside house to themselves. In the middle of the night, she wakes from sleep because she hears someone creeping into her room.

Then a hand lands on her shoulder. She goes into autopilot.

Her hand grabs for the decorative, pointy seashell on the bedside table and swings it right at her attacker’s face in the dark. It hits the target with a crunch.

“What the _hell_!”

She blinks, orienting steadily. “Finn?”

“What’re you doing, trying to break my nose?” She drops the shell and turns on the bedside light and there he is, fully dressed, now trying to control a steady drip of blood from his nose.

“Tilt your head up,” she instructs, throwing the covers off her legs. She runs to the washroom, brings back some towels for the blood. “Let me have a look.”

He does. Not broken, she thinks with relief. Her aim hadn’t been great. It’s just a nosebleed.

Clearly Finn doesn’t find this as reassuring. Muffled, he says, “Do you know how much this nose is worth?”

“Well, you should’ve thought of that _before_ you decided to attack me in my sleep,” Clarke snaps. Her heart is only now slowing down, adrenaline only now settling. It’s okay. She’s okay. No one’s here to hurt her.

Finn studies her, and then his voice comes a little kinder. “What kind of life have you lived that _that_ was your first thought, huh?”

She looks away, not able to stand his pity. “It had its moments.” She frowns and looks back at him. “What were you doing here, then? It’s the middle of the night.”

“Oh, that.” He removes the towel from his nose. It’s stopped bleeding. “We’re gonna sneak out.” At her raised eyebrows, he clarifies. “We’re gonna lose the bodyguards.”

“What’s the purpose of that?”

“For fun? What else? Besides, there’s this amazing cave I wanna show you not far from here. It’s not roomy enough for the bodyguards.”

“Finn, that’s not safe. What if there’s someone—”

“Come on, _here_?” Finn rolls his eyes. “No one even knows we’re here. Live a little, princess. Be a rebel.”

Maybe it’s just out of guilt for nearly breaking his million dollar face, but Clarke relents.

—

And it works out fine. They tiptoe quietly out of the house, although Clarke gets the sense they’re not really slipping under the bodyguards’ radar at all. Roan’s snoring too loudly in the foyer to really be convincing. Clarke rolls her eyes at him pointedly as she passes and is certain she sees his mouth twitch.

But Finn shows her the cave, and the crystals in the rock glow in the moonlight, and it’s actually pretty cool.

Throughout the rest of the vacation, Clarke learns a few things:

Finn can definitely be annoying. But he’s charming in his own way.

He makes her laugh, a lot, even when she’s annoyed with him, _especially_ then. When she seems in a dark mood, he can often pull her out of it for a while. It always comes back later, when she’s by herself, but in the moment, he does make it better with his antics.

At the very least he is entertaining, and sometimes she can see what fate was trying to do here. If her cushy, perfect life had gone as planned, Finn feels like someone she might’ve fallen for easily.

But life hadn’t gone as planned. So it’s going to be harder.

—

It’s near the end of the vacation, and they’re sunning at the beach in their gigantic sunglasses, when Finn says, “Listen, Clarke, I know you’ll be in med school. But I want to keep doing this when we get back home.”

“I’ll be busy,” Clarke says evenly, to disguise the fact that her heart is beating far too fast.

“I know that. I’ll come visit you, make sure you take your head out of the textbooks once in a while.” He winks, and god, he’s cheesy. Clarke smirks and glances at her new phone.

Bellamy had rarely texted since he began his job. He’s been busy, she knows. He sold the Rover and his old house, bought a new car. It seems he’s moving on with his life. If he can, so can she. She owes it to both of them to make the most of their sacrifice.

“Are you going to answer?” Finn asks. She pockets her phone.

“Yeah, okay. Sure.”

He rolls over and before she can react, kisses her. It’s so fast and surprising that she doesn’t have time to think about whether she likes it or not before he’s pulled away again.

She touches her lips slowly as he goes on like nothing happened. “What are the odds I can convince your faculty to give you another month off with me? What do you think, are they Finn Collins fans?”

Clarke rolls her eyes, and then her smile fades when she spots someone across the beach that makes her bolt into a sitting position.

She can’t see the girl’s face, but she recognizes the clothes. They’re burned into her retinas at this point. Blue henley, dark jacket, hair pinned up in a highly specific way.

It’s the girl from the village near Monty’s farm who’d taken a picture of her. And now… she’s standing staring directly at her.

Clarke squints. She’s pretty sure she’s _smiling_.

Clarke’s on her feet immediately, ignoring Finn’s questions about what’s wrong, _where’s she going_ , _Clarke slow down_ , and takes off down the beach as fast as her feet will take her. But there’s too many people here, crowds she has to push past, a volleyball game that she has to zigzag through, ignoring annoyed shouts from bystanders.

By the time Clarke, out of breath, hits the spot on the beach where she’d swear she saw her, she sees no sign of her at all.

Roan’s at her side immediately. Clarke doesn’t even know where he’d been standing watch, but it probably wasn’t hard to keep up with her. “What’s wrong?” he asks, scanning the area.

“There—there was a girl. She looked like me.” She knows how vague and unhelpful that sounds, but still. It’s the only words coming from her scared mouth right now. But Roan just listens, dark eyes narrowing, as she stumbles into her explanation of how she’d seen her before.

“I know it sounds stupid, but I have a feeling it’s more than just a fan. And if she’s followed me to a different country…” Panic threatens to close her throat. Roan sort of gives her a look like he knows she’s on the verge of a breakdown.

“Alright, princess. Calm down. We’ll find her.”

He turns around, but another thought occurs to Clarke. “Roan. Remember when you were hired for me? My mom said there was one person part of the original soulmark trials that was never accounted for. What if…”

She doesn’t finish her sentence. But Roan nods.

“Like I said, we’ll find her.”

Roan presses his earpiece and begins to speak to the team in low tones. Clarke sinks into the sand, ignoring the curious looks of bystanders. Clarke Griffin’s insane run across a busy beach is going to be on a gossip site tonight, she’s sure. But she can’t bring herself to care right at this moment.

Finn finally catches up and kneels beside her. “What’s going on in that pretty head of yours, princess?”

His voice is more gentle, but Clarke shakes her head rapidly. Terrified. She can’t speak. She keeps thinking about that day when she was a teenager when her innocence was taken away forever. She can’t go through that again. Not again.

A quiet sob escapes her. Roan hears, wheeling around, his eyebrows raised.

Clarke’s surprised herself, too. She’s not usually one to have a public breakdown and he knows that. Definitely not when there are tons of phones being pointed at her.

“Let’s get you back to the house,” Roan says, and grabs her hand to pull her up.

—

Roan comes back hours later, shaking his head.

“We searched all over. We didn’t find anything.”

Clarke hugs herself. “She was there,” she whispers, half not even believing her own words. Maybe the stress is starting to get to her. “I swear.”

Roan gives her an odd look. “I believe you. We’re going to beef up your security for the rest of the trip.”

—

That night, Clarke has a nightmare. She’s back in her kitchen at the old Griffin mansion with everyone she loves. There’s a girl with a blue henley and jacket and pinned up hair, holding a handgun, her back to Clarke as she points her gun at Jake Griffin. Clarke begs and begs her to stop, but she can only watch as her stalker shoots her father. Then she shifts her aim, shoots Wells next. Then Abby.

Bellamy is last. Clarke falls to her knees and begs her not to kill him, that she’ll do anything for her not to kill him too. The girl doesn’t listen. She shoots him too, right in the heart.

Then she turns to face Clarke. And it’s her own face, grinning maniacally back at her.

Clarke wakes up screaming loud enough to bring half the security detail to her room and Finn, too.

She pushes everyone away, half-sobbing and half-ordering people to get out. Slowly, the bodyguards relax again and slink out of the room.

By the time she collects herself, she’s embarrassed. Finn’s still in the room, watching her with new eyes. It’s the worst nightmare she’s had in a long time. Very few people have seen her break down like this. Usually it was Bellamy.

She wipes her tears away, and crisply tells Finn she’s fine now.

“You want me to stay?”

She just wants to be alone. “No, but thanks.”

Finn nods and leaves. Clarke ends up watching TV for the rest of the night—documentaries on the History channel.

She must fall asleep at some point, though, because she wakes in the morning with sun streaming through the window and a little deer made out of scrap metal on her bedside table.

There aren’t any more sightings for the rest of the trip.

—

When Clarke gets home, it’s time to pack to go back to school. Before she can, though, Roan sits her down.

“If your stalker is the same person involved in the soulmarks experiments, her name is Josephine Lightbourne.”

The name means nothing to Clarke. Still… “Do you know anything about her? Family? Home addresses? Work?”

Roan shakes his head slowly. “We know things about her past, but Josephine’s trail went cold about seven years ago.” He holds her gaze until Clarke counts back silently in her head and gets it. This woman disappeared off the grid when Shumway, Dax and Sydney had died in the Griffin mansion by Clarke’s hand.

Clarke swallows and lifts her chin. “Give me all the information you have.”

Roan slides a folder over to her, evidently prepared for that request. Clarke flips through it. Josephine’s photo jumps out to her immediately. Wavy blonde hair, a thin face with blue eyes and a cunning smile, dressed in graduation regalia from an Ivy League university, where—Clarke scans the page—she’d graduated top of her class in biology and criminal science.

Roan clears his throat. “Another thing.”

Clarke looks up.

“I’ve made a shortlist of candidates to replace me,” he says. He’d already gotten a contract in his new job before all this, Clarke knows. His last day is in two weeks and she’s been trying not to panic about it. “To be clear, I think you should hire a whole security detail for when you go out from now on. Especially if you’ve got a stalker. It sounds like you’re going to have a lot of public engagements this year with the company and school and… Finn, so having a whole team is important. But you’ll need a chief of security to manage them. I’ve got a few people in mind back at Eligius. You want to meet them?”

Clarke looks back down at the folder, all the information on Josephine Lightbourne she now has to read. She only has a few days before school starts up. She has to finish packing and prepare for the latest Polaris board meeting and see her mother before she moves and run all kinds of errands. She doesn’t have the time to sift through applications. “Pick whoever you think is best and I’ll meet them tomorrow. If I don’t like them, I’ll get you to choose another.”

Roan nods once and leaves her to her reading.

—

The next day, Clarke’s got her living arrangements at school arranged, her packing done. Her last stop before meeting her applicant for chief of security is Polaris for a visit with Jaha.

Jaha’s waiting for her in the lab when she arrives. “Clarke. I trust you’re well?”

Clarke nods automatically. “What’ve we found out since we last met?”

They start walking between rows of lab tables, microscopes and other equipment. Jaha tells her how Sinclair had developed an algorithm to sort through the soulmarks data, but they hadn’t found anything new from it. Nor have they been able to isolate a gene that decides soulmark either.

“To conclude,” he finishes, “unfortunately, with no fresh data and without being able to test any idea we have, we’re at a dead end.”

Clarke wheels around, stopping them in their tracks. “What if we _could_ test it?”

Jaha watches her. “Are you suggesting another human trial?”

“Yes. Don’t look at me like that. With ethics approval.”

“Ethics is unlikely to approve any more human trials without substantial evidence that it will go better than last time.” She doesn’t say anything. Jaha goes on. “To what end are you doing this, Clarke? Are you going to make a product out of this? Tell people they can change their destiny, for a price?”

Clarke scoffs bitterly. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do with it. This is essentially a passion project and Jaha knows it. Still, she says, “People would buy it.”

“Perhaps. Which would make it useless.”

Clarke’s had enough of his cryptic remarks. “Submit the proposal to ethics. I’ll write a letter to them myself.” She starts for the door. Jaha calls after her.

“And what will you do if they still reject you?”

Clarke doesn’t give an answer. Because she doesn’t have one.

—

She’s in her study working on her next speech for the next Polaris press conference when one of the housestaff appears at her study door. “Someone here for you, Ms. Griffin. Sent by Roan to meet regarding the position as your chief of security.”

“Send him in.” She refocuses on the screen, and doesn’t lift her eyes until she hears footsteps approaching. She freezes.

Because she recognizes the cadence of those footsteps.

Black laced boots stop at her doorway. Her eyes drag up to meet a very familiar gaze.

“Bellamy?” she asks disbelievingly. She hasn’t seen him since—since two months ago, when they left Green Farms. They’ve chatted over text only, the occasional phone call, but they’ve both been so busy, and now he’s here and _wait_ , he’s wearing his Eligius-issued jacket—

Her mind catches up to the implications of him being here.

“ _No_ ,” she says automatically.

He crosses his arms, a bored look on his face. Maybe it’s just because it’s been a while since she last saw him, but he looks good. Really good in that uniform. “You haven’t even heard what I have to say yet.”

“I am not hiring you as my bodyguard.”

“Your _chief of security_ ,” he corrects loftily, striding over to stand over her desk, over her. She wishes he wouldn’t. Firstly because now she has to tilt her chair back a little to make eye contact and it feels a little bit like she’s relinquishing power to him, and she’s thrown off enough already.

But also because him being so close has her mind going a little hazy.

“I want the job,” he tells her, and she blinks out of it. “You and I both know no one else is going to be able to do it like me.”

His words hang in the air like a double entendre.

She crosses her legs under the table. “I said no, Bellamy.”

He leans over her desk, large hands bracing on either side of her laptop. “Why not?”

“First tell me why you want it.”

“Because I need a job,” he says slowly, like he’s explaining to a child. “Spacewalker fired me, remember?”

“So what? I thought you had work at that detention centre.”

“That was a _summer job_ ,” he scoffs. “You wouldn’t believe how many of the inmates recognized me because of you and took me less seriously because of it. That place sure isn’t hiring me again.” Dark smile. “It’s still not easy. Because of you, I’m back to square one. If you want me unemployed, then I’ll walk out.”

He’s _guilting_ her. Deliberately. But it also sounds like a threat. Clarke’s eyes narrow in suspicion. He wants the job, she believes that, she just doesn’t believe the reason he gave.

Is he trying to rub it in Finn’s face? That’s possible, especially with the attitude he’s giving her right now, but her instincts tell her there’s something deeper.

“I don’t want you as my bodyguard,” she tells him, testing the waters. “You’re my friend.”

“Really? You’ve been jumping at the bit to give me money our whole lives. Now’s your chance, and you’re not taking it?”

She glares at him. The selfish part of her has started mulling it over. Bellamy, part of her security team? He’d be around her a lot. She could stop missing him all the time. They could talk, and she could see him every day. She dives further into this bluff. “Well, let’s talk about pay then.”

His answer is immediate. “Let’s.”

She doesn’t let her shock show on her face. Not a bluff, then. She tells him an amount. Bellamy shakes his head.

“That’s triple what you paid Roan. Pay me the same.”

“Double,” she says. He shakes his head, firm.

“Pay me the same.”

She grinds her teeth. “I’m not going lower. Take it or leave it. That’s the offer.”

Bellamy pushes off the desk and starts walking out the door. Clarke narrows her eyes, trying to decide if he’s bluffing.

But what if he’s not? What if in the end he truly won’t get a job? He didn’t really enjoy hopping between odd jobs at Eligius, she remembers that much. And they certainly didn’t pay as well.

She thinks about inmates at that detention centre giving him a hard time, taunting him, probably fighting back, too. She wonders how many times Bellamy got hurt in that place because of his association to her.

In the end, despite the fact that she hasn’t figured out his game yet, that’s what makes her call to him. “Wait.”

He stops at the doorway.

She can’t help herself. “One and a _half_ times more than what I paid Roan.”

“Goodbye, Clarke.” He opens the door. Clarke grinds her teeth.

“Fine. I’ll pay you the same,” she spits, and _then_ Bellamy turns around, a victorious glint in his eye.

—

Clarke calls Roan after Bellamy has left. He’s off at Eligius sorting the details of his resignation, so she can’t see him in person.

When he picks up, she snaps, “You’re a jackass.”

“Did you say yes?”

“Yes, but—”

“Good. I’ll get the paperwork done,” he says. “Now stop pouting. We all know I did you a favour.”

—

Clarke stays pissed at Roan for a little while. She hardly talks to him when they run errands. Roan seems perfectly fine with this reaction, which pisses her off further.

Then it’s time for her to fly back to her med school. Finn had lent her one of his private jets to take her to school, for security reasons, and she can’t say she’s not relieved about it.

On the tarmac, she catches sight of Bellamy rolling up with his single carry-on suitcase.

She looks at Roan. “Wait, why is he here already? I thought you weren’t leaving yet.”

Roan seems amused at her panic. “I’m showing him the ropes before I leave. Handover.”

It makes perfect sense, but still. She looks at Bellamy. He avoids her gaze.

On the plane, she stretches her legs and puts in earphones, pretending to listen to music when in reality she’s straining her ears to hear Roan and Bellamy’s conversation on the other side. She hears some stuff about the layout of her school, her daily schedule, the tricky places to keep watch on campus, the house security system, and information on the rest of the hired security detail, who Clarke will meet once she arrives at school.

She finds herself studying Bellamy for much of the flight. It’s a little strange, actually, to see how her best friend who wears his heart on his sleeve can retreat into a mask of himself. It’s actually sort of jarring, although it shouldn’t be. She’d just forgotten during the time they were away.

—

Clarke’s house on campus once again has an adjoining, separate part of the house for her bodyguards, connected by a door in the wall between them. Once they’ve moved in, Roan and Bellamy go on that side, and Clarke’s alone on her side. Again.

Both of them accompany her on her first few days of classes. She ignores the curious stares of classmates, the whispers, too, when Bellamy is seen by them.

In Roan’s last few days of work he introduces her to the rest of her security detail: Miiller, Monroe, Fox, Sterling and Atom.

Clarke takes them all in with wide eyes. “There’s a lot of you.”

“They don’t always have to be with you,” Roan replies. “But they’re in town, and they’ve signed on for a part time contract with you. Whenever you go to any kind of public event, they’ll make sure you’re safe. Bellamy will manage the team.”

Bellamy, as always, says nothing.

—

And then, finally, it’s Roan’s last day on the job. That evening after she’s finished her classes, she’s faced with the prospect of saying goodbye after more than seven years.

They’re alone in the foyer. Roan hands her back his copy of the house keys. Clarke takes the keys and puts them in her pocket to give Bellamy later.

“Goodbye, Roan,” she says.

Roan nods at her, then slowly turns to leave. Clarke can’t take it anymore.

She takes the few steps forward it takes to hug him around his middle. He returns the embrace, and she rests her head against his chest and tears up a little. But when she steps away she’s cool as a cucumber.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she tells him.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He studies her. “You’re in good hands. I can leave with a clear conscience.”

Clarke nods, then just decides to ask the question that’s been burning at her for the past two weeks. “Why did Bellamy agree? Because he heard about Josephine?”

“He agreed even before I told him about Josephine.” Roan shrugs. “But then again, kid’s always been a masochist.”

Clarke frowns. Roan watches her puzzlement, seeming more amused by the second. He opens the door. “Take care, Clarke.”

—

The next day, on her way to class, Bellamy falls into step beside her. She gives him a sidelong glance. He doesn’t return it. He’s too busy scanning the area. Now that Roan’s gone, she has to wonder if this is going to be awkward.

But as she finds out over the course of the day, Bellamy is the perfect, professional bodyguard. He’s at her side when she’s out on campus, drifts away a little when she’s talking to people, and disappears to his side of the house entirely when Clarke comes home from her classes.

She hates when he disappears.

A few days into this new normal, she’s alone on her side of the house, doing a reading for the next day. But in truth, she’s long since stopped reading and is only listening to Bellamy walking around on his side of the house. He’s making dinner and she can smell how delicious it must be. She wonders if she could beg him to give her some. Or, even better, to ask if they could make dinner together one of these days.

But she has a feeling Bellamy would flat-out reject the idea. And who is she, anyway, to try to encroach on his life? Or at least, what little of it he has in his downtime?

Something occurs to her then. She frowns and sets down her pen. “Bellamy? If you’re not busy, can you come over?”

She makes sure her voice is loud enough to carry, and a minute later, he’s knocking on their adjoined door.

She opens it. He’s dressed in sweatpants and a soft looking tee. She hastily focuses and realizes he’s carrying a plate of food. A delicious looking chicken stir fry. He hands it to her. Before she can give him thanks, he says flatly, “I thought you said you weren’t going anywhere else tonight.”

Oh. He thinks that’s why she called him over. “I’m not. I just… remembered we never talked about your vacation time. It wasn’t in the boilerplate contract, but me and Roan negotiated time off later on. So how many months, yearly, do you want?”

Bellamy doesn’t say anything for a second. Then: “I don’t need any vacation time.”

She blinks. “You don’t _need any_ —?”

“That’s right,” he replies shortly. “Good night, Clarke.” And he swings the door shut in her face.

She stares at it, and it finally clicks. The reason he’s gone and signed a legal, two year contract to be her chief of security.

Suddenly Roan’s comments about him being a masochist make much more sense. Bellamy’s found a way to let her move on while not doing it himself. To watch from a distance as she lives her life, and never give himself a chance to rebuild his own.

And she just let him.

—

The next morning, as they’re walking across campus to her class, she brings it up.

“I know what you’re doing.”

He barely reacts. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. And I’m not letting you do it. I’m not letting you waste your life on me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he replies, scanning their surroundings. “You’re just a job.”

She’s not fooled. “Bellamy, what if you went back to school?”

His jaw tightens, and she knows she’s hit a nerve. “This again?”

“Bellamy, I know how much I’m paying you. I’ll let you out of your contract a year early. You can go to a smaller-size school and still keep your rainy day fund.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Don’t lie to me.” She’s seen him peer curiously at her textbooks. She’s seen the look on his face every time they enter the library; like he’s itching to go take a look at the classics section. Not only that, but… “Octavia told me you used to write college essays and fill in applications. You just never sent them.”

“Fine, say I go to school. And then what, Clarke? Then what do I do?” His voice is cutting, mocking, but there’s something under it. Something vulnerable. And she seizes onto it.

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re happy with that? Or maybe you get a job with it, or get your Master’s? Maybe you teach?” His footsteps falter for a millisecond before resuming a brisk stride. She presses the advantage. “Come on, Bellamy. Lecturing a hall full of kids, giving long speeches on the myths you love until they all make fun of you for being so into it, doesn’t that sound good?”

“No.”

“Or you could do something else with it? The point is you live, Bellamy. _For yourself_. You’re still allowed to do that. Move on.”

_Move on from me, or neither of us will._

No response. It frustrates her. But they’ve reached the med building, and she can tell he’s not going to talk to her anymore. Fine.

That night, she does some research. It doesn’t have anything to do with medicine or biotech or business or anything else in her own life. She looks up arts colleges, and starts making notes on applications timelines.

—

A few weeks later, Jaha calls her up. “Ethics said no.”

“Please tell me you’re not serious.” Clarke rubs her eyes, hunched over at her work table. She’d put so much effort into that proposal. She’d even sacrificed her pride and got Lexa’s input on it. All wasted, apparently.

“We talked about this. There’s no reason for them to approve another trial. I have to advise against pushing for it. It’ll only attract more bad press.”

Clarke thanks him and dials up some of her contacts at Polaris next, to find out the names of the people who were on the ethics committee. Then she arranges to set up a meeting with some of them in person. Maybe if she can show herself as really genuine they’ll reconsider.

Miller, Monroe and Sterling accompany them for the outing. In the car, she listens to Bellamy talk, telling the team all the exits, vantage points, and possible security risks associated with the building they’re heading to. Apparently earlier in the day they’d scoped the whole place out, including who would be working at the time. She has to marvel at the amount of work Bellamy put in for an hour long meeting.

As for the other bodyguards, she finds that she likes them. They crack jokes, and are nice, and make her laugh with their banter in the car and the way they rib Bellamy, although he never cracks a smile.

“He doesn’t have a sense of humour, but that’s okay, we still love him,” Monroe whispers to Clarke. Clarke smiles back although Monroe’s wrong. Bellamy has a delightful, unexpected sense of humour. It’s just that usually he keeps his commentary to himself.

Once upon a time, he had shared it with Clarke. Because she’d asked him to.

But gazing at the back of Bellamy’s head, she realizes with a pang to her chest that somewhere along the way she’s lost that privilege.

—

Later that day, Clarke leaves the room the private meeting had taken place. She feels Bellamy’s curious eyes as he falls into step with her. He clearly is wondering how that went. Well, if he’s not going to share what’s going on in his head, she’s not going to share what’s in hers.

She gets in the Eligius issued BMW after the whole vehicle is checked over by Monroe and Miller, which takes forever. When she’s seated, she irritably yanks at her seatbelt. She’s irrationally angry at everything. “We’re going to the shopping mall,” she says curtly to Bellamy in the driver’s seat. He startles a bit.

“That wasn’t part of the schedule.”

He would’ve wanted to scope out the mall, too, she knows. Too bad. “Well, I don’t always go by schedule,” she snaps. She lists off the address. The other bodyguards are completely silent, and she regrets her rudeness. Not only because Bellamy doesn’t deserve it, but because it makes it very clear how the meeting went.

As in, not her way. The clinical trial she had proposed is definitely not happening.

She takes out her frustration on her credit card at the mall. As her frivolous purchases and expensive clothes pile up, store attendants tripping over themselves to get her whatever she wants, she can feel Bellamy’s disapproval radiating her way. She’s acting like the spoiled diva princess the world makes her out to be. Well, so what? Maybe she _is_ that person. Maybe she can’t help that. Maybe it was decided from the moment she was born into a filthy rich family with star-studded friends and soulmates, and being friends with Bellamy had only ever masked that truth.

She gets recognized quickly as she walks around the mall, and she instructs her bodyguards to keep people away from her. She lets them manhandle those who get too close while she picks out designer handbags. She tests dozens of perfumes until she gets a headache, then buys them all, ignoring the phones pointed her way. She doesn’t give a damn. Not today.

—

Finn calls her that night.

“You _hired Bellamy_.”

So the photos have already made the rounds. Clarke’s making herself dinner, but she grabs her phone to Google herself. Sure enough, headlines screaming things like CLARKE GRIFFIN’S SHOPPING SPREE! And CLARKE GRIFFIN’S NEW BODYGUARD IS A LITTLE FAMILIAR jump out.

“So what?” she says dully. “Roan hired him for me. Said he was the best.”

“And you didn’t think anything was wrong with that.” Silence. “Clarke, we talked about why I let him go, remember? You’re hurting him just by letting him in. And it wasn’t professional of him to accept the job either.”

She laughs bitterly. “He’s made it clear he’s going to be _very_ professional. And I trust him.” Even if she’s lost him as a friend, he still makes her feel safe.

“You _trust_ him? Clarke, he’s got history with you.”

Clarke’s tired of this conversation. “I’m not changing my mind, Finn. If you’re not going to trust him, trust me. I barely even talk to him anymore. He’s my bodyguard and nothing else.” Her words are razor sharp. She wants him to hear her. Finn sighs.

She hears a creak on the other side of the wall and realizes Bellamy heard as well.

—

Finn surprises her by showing up that weekend to take her for a night on the town. Clarke is determined to throw herself into it, to have fun. She orders Bellamy to stay at home.

He stares at her, a little shocked. “I’m your chief of security.”

“We’ll have Finn’s entire guard detail. I’ll take Miller with me for personal protection.” She lifts her chin haughtily. “Take the night off.”

She doesn’t think she imagines the flicker of hurt in his eyes, perhaps the first show of emotion since this whole game between them began. But what else is she supposed to do? She can’t enjoy herself if Bellamy’s there. Forcing him to stay home is better for both of them.

—

Clarke continues to spiral a bit as the fall semester goes on. This city’s got a healthy community of socialites, and Finn drags her to plenty of parties. Eventually she starts going to them by herself. When an infamous hotel heiress invites her over for a party, Clarke agrees without hesitation.

Bree’s place is decked out. The party is going strong by the time Clarke arrives. Her bodyguards, as per usual, melt away. Except Bellamy. For whatever reason, he’s apparently decided to put himself in the close proximity position today.

She ignores him. Just as he always ignores her.

Bree, along with her posse, finds Clarke at the door and hugs her tight even though they’ve only ever met in passing before. “Oh my god, you made it! I didn’t believe you were going to come. Everyone used to say you never came to parties.”

Clarke shifts a little uncomfortably. It’s true; in the past she’s avoided the socialite crowd. It was silly, looking back. She thought if she shunned them, that she wasn’t one of them. But—she rubs her clock face soulmark absently—clearly that wasn’t true. It’s time to stop pretending.

She accepts the drink Bree hands her. Bree’s eyes shift behind her. “Well, _hellooo_.”

Clarke stiffens. Bree’s looking at Bellamy. Well, _looking_ is an inaccurate descriptor for what she’s actually doing. Undressing him with her eyes is more like it.

Clarke’s temper rises. She turns to Bellamy and says something she has heard plenty of people say to their bodyguards that she thought she would never:

“You can go wait with the other security people.”

Her voice comes out more haughty than she intended. Bellamy arches a brow at her. For a second she thinks he will disobey her.

But he doesn’t. He spins on the heel and strides away, hands in his pockets.

Clarke isn’t the only one watching him go.

Bree pushes her shoulder teasingly. “You didn’t have to make him _leave_. You should give him the night off. Let him have some fun.” Her tone implies exactly what kind of fun Bellamy could have, and with who.

Clarke doesn’t crack a smile.

“I really don’t know how you never jumped him,” Bree adds with an arched brow. Her whole posse is silent, watching Clarke. It’s a challenge. For Clarke to either admit she’s slept with him, the way everyone suspects, or relinquish claim to him completely.

Instead of answering, Clarke tips back her drink, which is strong enough to make her eyes water, and also hopefully enough to forget that she has never had any claim to Bellamy.

The night wears on, and Clarke does eventually forget about it. She forgets everything, actually, which is the exact point of coming here. She drinks and dances with random people and drifts from party game to party game. Periodically she glimpses Bellamy at the wall, watching, and she’ll do another shot just to spite him. Or to spite herself. She doesn’t know the difference anymore.

A strange sadness overtakes her then, and she sulks in a corner for a while. At least until Bree finds her again in the crowd and grabs her arm, tugging her along.

“You look like you could use some cheering up,” she says in her ear.

She tugs Clarke up a spiral staircase to a bathroom, where there’s three neat lines of white powder on the counter.

“What’s that?” Clarke asks uneasily.

They laugh like she’s said the funniest thing ever. They push her playfully.

“It’s salt.”

“It’s parmesan.”

“It’s baking powder.”

“Come on, Clarke, you know what it is.”

They laugh and laugh. Clarke stares at it for a second. Well, it’s not like it’ll be the first time she did this. She steps forward. But then a hand seizes her wrist from behind, wrenching her back.

She turns to find that Bellamy has appeared in the doorway, a dark expression on his face. His eyes shift to the others. “Get out.”

Bree pouts. “You can join in on the fun, if you want—”

“I said, _get out_.”

His voice is commanding, authoritative, and does funny things to Clarke’s body. The others immediately file out. Bellamy pushes Clarke into the bathroom and closes the door behind them.

Clarke giggles to herself as she hears the lock click into place. Trapped in a bathroom with Bellamy Blake. How thrilling.

Bellamy slowly turns back to her. “Clarke, what the hell are you doing?”

She steps into his space and slides her hands up his chest. “Did I ever tell you how sexy you look in this jacket?”

He bats her hands away. “This has to stop.”

“Come _on_ , loosen up,” she whines, the same words Finn has said to her countless times at parties just like this.

“You’ve been going off the rails lately. You’re going to hurt yourself. Trust me, this—” he gestures to the drink still in her hand, to the lines of powder on the counter. “—this doesn’t end well. Ever.”

His voice wavers a little, and that’s ultimately what snaps Clarke out of it. He’s talking about his mother. She wishes she could ask how Aurora’s doing. But she knows Bellamy would deflect. Clarke isn’t special enough for him to tell things like that anymore.

“What do you care?” she says softly, and watches him flinch.

“Obviously I care, Clarke.”

“You could’ve fooled me.” She hugs herself and sits down on the edge of the bathtub, feeling small and sad. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking these days.”

Bellamy stands there, his hands on his hips, his jaw working before he speaks again. “I’m your bodyguard, Clarke. There are boundaries. I can’t—I can’t be that person to you anymore.”

She stares down at the tiled floor, and mulls that over. So that’s why he’s shut her out.

She wishes having answers made her feel better. But it doesn’t. More than anything, Clarke hates that he did this—on purpose, basically. Becoming her bodyguard forced a barrier between them. The message is clear. _We have to grow up_.

She doesn’t want to fucking grow up. She wants to stay on the rooftop under a blanket with Bellamy Blake and talk about the most inconsequential things. She wants to be able to kiss his neck just because the slope of his Adam’s apple is so beautiful, and not have it mean anything more than that. She wants to run away from Roan together, and drive around in the middle of the night in the Rover with her feet propped up on the dash. A lump grows in her throat.

“I miss you,” falls from her lips, and she sounds like a child.

His eyes instantly soften. “I’m right here.”

She shakes her head, eyes burning inexplicably. He’s never been further away.

When she doesn’t respond, Bellamy takes a few steps forward and kneels in front of her. “Clarke.”

His hand skims over hers where it rests on her bare knee. It’s the smallest brush of his fingers over her knuckles, but she has been absolutely deprived of it, so it jolts her. She can’t even remember what life was like before she knew that touch.

“Why can’t we have this?” she bursts. “I don’t see what’s so wrong about us being in each other’s lives. Like normal people, not like this.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t. Why don’t you spell it out for me,” she adds, angry. “Say it.”

“You’re soulmated,” he says, and it’s exactly what she’d feared his reply would be. She waves a hand as dismissively as she can.

“You can still have _friends_ when you’re soulmated.”

He watches her with dark eyes. “You can’t have friends like us.”

A silence falls. His eyes are on her, caressing her. She turns her head to the side, trying to shake off the response her body has. Because she knows he’s right. It wasn’t fair to Wells and it still isn’t fair with Finn.

Clarke had thought she could have both her soulmate and Bellamy in her life but she’s not sure anymore.

“Then maybe you should leave,” she says, her voice horribly distant.

“Fire me and I will,” he replies quietly.

A tense silence falls.

Despite her own words, though, Clarke doesn’t actually want him to leave. But she _wants_ to want it. For Bellamy’s sake. She opens her mouth and tries to say it: _You’re fired. Don’t come back, ever. Or neither of us will move on_.

Her heart collapses in on itself even thinking those words. She presses her lips together. The agony of wanting him to leave but also never wanting to let him go is tearing her apart. She can tell from the look in his eyes that he feels the same.

Because of this, Clarke is not sure she’ll ever be able to fully give herself to Finn. Because of this, Bellamy’s never going to live his life. And eventually, he will resent her for it. Maybe Clarke will resent him in return.

Clarke used to wonder about people who were in relationships with partners other than their soulmate. How could they stay together knowing this was most definitely _not_ the right person for them? That it would end badly?

But she understands it now. Because she has fallen into the same absurdly predictable pattern—it’s obvious that Clarke and Bellamy’s inability to let each other go is going to destroy them.

And yet they still. Can’t. Let. Go.

Bellamy sighs when she doesn’t say anything. “We should get back, or people will talk.” He rises from his kneeling position, tosses another glance at the lines of powder, then wipes them off the counter with his sleeve. “Don’t do anything else stupid.”

—

To Bellamy’s relief, Clarke finally ends her streak of recklessness. She stops partying, stops pretending to be the spoiled little princess he knows she isn’t. In return, Bellamy tries not to be so cold towards her. It’s hard, though. Because if he stops being cold, he falls into old patterns with her too quickly. And that’s dangerous.

Bellamy knows this whole job was a bad idea. His sister had told him as much over the phone when she heard.

“She’s got a _soulmate_ , Bell,” Octavia had said. “Face it. You don’t mean as much to her as she does to you. Stop embarrassing yourself.”

Octavia doesn’t get it, though.

At least this way he gets a piece of Clarke. Just a tiny piece, but it’s appropriate, and no one would say he’s taking her away from her soulmate if he’s just her bodyguard. And besides, what else is there for him to do? Gina’s gone; she doesn’t need him. Octavia definitely doesn't need him. His mother pretends she doesn’t need him.

But it’s ingrained in Bellamy to be needed. If he’s needed, then it’s worth getting out of bed every morning. So when Roan cornered him at Eligius headquarters to ask, it was the natural thing to say yes.

He just didn’t expect it to be so painful.

It’s especially painful every time Finn visits her. There’s a rhythm to it now. Finn will show up bearing expensive gifts: jewellery, clothes, Broadway tickets. He’ll give Clarke one of his cheesy lines like how he’s been waiting for Clarke to play doctor on him or something. Then Clarke will shoot Bellamy a glance before ordering him to take the night off.

She’s trying to spare his feelings. But those nights off are absolute torture, because then he’s alone with his thoughts and his imagination running rampant thinking of all the things Clarke could be doing with Finn Collins.

—

It’s a cold day in mid-November. The weather’s just about as miserable as he feels inside today.

Because it’s the anniversary of Gina’s death. He almost can’t believe it’s been a year since the last time they spoke. It feels too short, and too long, simultaneously.

He braces for Clarke to say something about it, but she doesn’t. She goes about her day as normal. Bellamy’s relieved. She probably doesn’t even know the exact date Gina died.

In any case, Bellamy does his job like it’s any other day. He’s diligent in checking public spaces before she walks into them, blocking someone who has recognized her as Jake Griffin’s daughter when she mutters she’s not in the mood for talking. He forces himself to be extra keen, to keep his own thoughts at bay.

Although he knows they’re going to swallow him up tonight and there’s nothing he can do about that.

After Clarke’s done her classes she tells him that instead of going home, they’re going to one of the campus libraries to study. This isn’t abnormal in itself, except instead of heading to the medical sciences library, she sets off in a different direction.

“Just changing it up,” she explains in a cool voice, keeping her eyes ahead. “I’m getting tired of studying in the same couple of places.”

The library she’s chosen has a much more inspired architecture than the bland, modern medical sciences one. It’s atrium has a high ceiling peaking with a latticed skylight on top, fluted Greek-style columns, classical-inspired marble statues in the foyer. He feels like he’s stepped into another world, but tries not to gawk at all the splendor. Instead he follows Clarke to the small shop just inside, where she proceeds to buy several pre-wrapped sandwiches.

“Dinner,” she explains, pressing a few into his hands. His brow furrows.

“We’re not going home?”

“I’m studying late tonight. I have so many finals coming up and I’m falling behind.”

They take the elevator up to the third floor, where he follows her to a private study room she must have pre-booked. Three of the walls are glass, and inside, it’s the perfect view of the books.

He itches to touch them. But he can’t leave Clarke. He makes to stand outside the door, but Clarke beckons him inside.

“I’ll be here a while. Sit down.”

Her words are bent into an order. He clenches his jaw. She knows he hates when she gives orders, which is probably why she gives him so many. Maybe she thinks if she irritates him enough, he’ll resign on his own, and she won’t have to face the decision of firing him.

This game of chicken between them is getting exhausting.

Clarke bends over her notes and it’s quiet for a little while. Bellamy watches her work. She seems distracted, though. Contrary to what she’d been saying about how much she needs to study, she stares at the same page for over an hour, and he’s pretty sure she’s somewhere else in her head.

Her phone buzzes, jarring them both. Clarke picks up and instantly stiffens.

So does Bellamy. The room and the library are so quiet he can hear Finn’s voice from the tinny speaker.

“Hey, sorry to call you while you’re busy. I just miss you.”

“It’s okay.” Clarke massages her temples. “I mean, I’m about to walk into a seminar, but it’s okay.”

Bellamy blinks. What? She’s sitting in this study room with textbooks all over the place, half-eaten sandwiches strewn on the table. She’s clearly not going anywhere—

All his half-baked suspicions finally click together.

He hears Finn go on. “I’m hoping you blew me off today because it’s something interesting.”

“Oh, very interesting. The seminar’s on… stem cells.” Oh, the bullshit of it all. “I promise it was a really good reason to blow you off.”

“Good. Well, I found out I can take another day off next week, so I’ll come then instead. Date night?”

“That sounds good, Finn. I have to go.”

“Alright, alright, fine. I’ll just sit here and drink champagne and think about you examining me. Gloves off.”

Bellamy’s glad Clarke is too busy rolling her eyes to notice he’s rolling his eyes, too, because then it would be obvious he’s eavesdropping. “Goodbye, Finn,” she says, and hangs up.

Slowly, she looks at Bellamy. Bellamy crosses his arms.

“Well, why’d you lie to him?”

“I wanted to study,” she says, looking him right in the eye, chin lifted. He finds himself growing angry.

“You’re not studying. You’ve been staring into space for two hours.”

“It’s a bad study day.”

“No, it’s not. That’s not what this is about.” When she doesn’t respond, he demands, “Why are we here, Clarke?”

Clarke chews her lip and looks away. It’s confirmation. All of tonight was a careful, orchestrated decision. Clarke chose not to study at home because at home, he can disappear. She chose not to leave campus because then, she’d need her whole detail. And she chose _this_ particular arts library because she knew its splendor would distract him from his thoughts.

Clarke knows exactly what day it is.

He glares at her. “I don’t need you to _watch me,_ Clarke. I’m not going to do anything.”

“I didn’t think you would,” she says at once, not bothering to deny it. “I just wanted to keep you company.”

He doesn’t like being deceived. He also doesn’t like the soft, sympathetic look she’s giving him. “Let’s go home. Right now.”

“No.”

He can’t very well make her go. She’s in charge here. He _literally_ signed a contract so she could be in charge of his every move. He doesn’t have room to complain and that kind of pisses him off even more.

Clarke’s expression shifts, a little more uncertain, like something’s occurred to her. “Is it… is it worse with me around?”

Her voice is a little tentative. Maybe some guilt in her eye too, as though she’s remembering what Bellamy and Gina’s last fight was about.

That’s not her burden to bear, though. “No.”

Clarke stands up abruptly. “Then let’s go for a walk.”

“A walk?” he repeats, slowly.

“Yes. I need a change of scenery.” She doesn’t wait for him. She strides out the door, and he hastens to follow.

Clarke seems to know her way around this place despite never coming here before. He has a feeling she did her research. She takes him around the stacks, through a certain aisle, and then sits down on the floor against a bookshelf. “I’m gonna sit here.”

He looks at the books they’ve stopped beside despite already knowing what he’s going to find. The mythology section.

“You might as well sit down,” Clarke says. “I’m going to be here for a while.” She opens her own textbook and starts reading without waiting for an answer.

Bellamy grinds his teeth and looks at the books. They’re calling his name. He wishes he were here without his Eligius jacket, with a backpack instead, maybe. He wishes he didn’t have a responsibility in the world. He wishes he had a different sort of life.

But this is the one he got. So he pulls a worn book off the shelf and sits across from Clarke.

They read in silence for hours.

—

Months pass. The year ends and folds into the next.

Clarke has an event coming up, the first public one in a while. Meaning Bellamy’s got his hands full with preparation. They’re going to be joined by a larger team of security and it’s up to him to manage them all.

It’s an annual charity event that was started by Clarke and her mother in Jake Griffin’s honour. Clarke’s been slaving away with organizing it for months.

He watches her agonize over invitations to A-listers and celebrities and rich people, and as the event draws closer even more stress seems to pile on her shoulders.

“You’re doing your best,” he tells her gently when one of the bands cancels on her last minute and she puts her head in her hands.

“That’s not enough,” she replies. “It has to be _perfect_.”

Bellamy doesn’t say anything. Last year, Clarke had left this event in the hands of Jaha while they were away on the farm, and Bellamy suspects she now feels she has to do even more to make up for it. Nothing he says will be helpful, so he just leaves her dinner on her kitchen counter every day until the event.

—

“This is mind-numbing,” Miller says. “I can’t believe rich people do this all the time. Maybe I don’t wanna be rich.”

Bellamy gives him a wry glance. It’s true that this event is dull as dishwater. Which basically means Clarke did a fantastic job organizing it to rich peoples’ tastes.

But he, too, is starting to relax a bit. The event is in full swing, and they’re just watching over things in between check-ins. Bellamy leans against a wall next to Miller, who’s started scrolling through his phone.

“Hey, check this out,” Miller chuckles, and Bellamy blinks back to reality to glance down at his screen. A headline jumps out. TWENTY-FIVE THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT CLARKE GRIFFIN’S BODYGUARD, it reads, accompanied by a photo of Bellamy walking next to Clarke down a street on campus, both their gazes downcast to avoid attention.

“The fact that you read this garbage explains a lot about you,” is Bellamy’s disinterested response. Miller ignores him as he scrolls through the article, a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Did you know you’re Wells Jaha’s half-brother? Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“And before you worked at Eligius, you were a stripper… Fascinating stuff… Maybe you can teach me some moves, I’d love to surprise Bryan.” Before Bellamy can give in to his urge to smack him, Miller’s smile fades a bit and he scrolls a little faster past the next fact. Curiosity gets the better of him. What fact is so weird or embarrassing Miller couldn’t even say it?

He grabs the phone and scrolls back up. _Fact #10_. _Bellamy had a fling with Clarke after his soulmate died, and boy, did they ever look good together. Too bad she’s taken forever now!_.

There’s that picture of them in the village near Monty’s farm, holding hands, to prove their point.

Bellamy hands the phone back to a silent Miller.

“I told you it was garbage,” he says evenly, but can’t quite force himself to meet Miller’s eyes. “I’m going to patrol a bit.”

He leaves without waiting for a response.

During his walk, he catches sight of Clarke herself, talking to some rich celebrity he recognizes from TV but can’t be bothered to place right now. She looks radiant in her evening gown. Expensive. Untouchable. He’s suddenly a teenager again, seeing her come back from her father’s awards night, and getting a jolt in his body as he took her in, took in the vast impossibility of a future with her.

Finn appears at her side, holding a glass of bubbly that probably costs a month of Bellamy’s salary. He says something to her, and she laughs. Bellamy can’t look at her when she laughs like that. He looks somewhere else, and that’s when he sees her.

A young, blonde woman, with her hair pinned up the way Clarke did when she was in that movie. She’s standing on the balcony on the opposite side of the room. His hand moves to his gun before his brain even catches up. He’s burned this woman’s face into his memory. Josephine Lightbourne.

The girl’s eyes shift to his, and widen infinitesimally. She twirls on the spot, and she’s gone. Bellamy touches his earpiece. “All units. Doppelganger on the run,” he says, the codeword for Clarke’s stalker. “I repeat, Doppelganger on the run. Second floor, south balcony. Don’t let her get out.”

And he takes off.

—

Clarke notices at some point, after dinner but before dessert, that Bellamy vanishes.

Truly, one moment he’s there, against the wall, scanning the room, and then the next time she sneaks a glance his way, he’s gone. Clarke does a full walk around the room, forcing herself to talk to everyone who approaches, just so she can see if he’s anywhere else here.

But he must have moved off the ground floor. It’s a little disappointing. She likes having him around. Even if he’s just in her peripheral vision.

However, that’s not all she notices. There’s a shift in the energy of the security people she _does_ see in the room. They’re talking rapidly into earpieces, walking fast, eyes alert. Clarke is sure something is going on.

But then the MC calls her name from the stage to deliver her remarks to the attendees, and she has no choice but to go up there. And she doesn’t get a chance to figure out what’s going on until much, much later.

It’s Finn who receives her, after her duties with the event are done. “There was a sighting of your stalker,” Finn tells her. “Sterling told me.”

Her body goes rigid. She gawks. “Josephine? Why didn’t anyone tell _me_?”

“Relax, princess. We knew you had some speeches to deliver, so we didn’t want to worry you. Bellamy’s off taking care of it.” At her displeased silence, he says, “This is your dad’s event. I know how special that is to you. I wasn’t going to ruin it by telling you.”

“You _should_ have ruined it. I deserve to know.”

“Don’t be pissed, princess—come on—”

She doesn’t let his charming nature wear her down, this time. She walks away from him, grinding her teeth, and waits for an update from her detail.

—

She has to wait a long time. As in, it’s one in the morning, Finn’s already grovelled for an apology, and she’s returned home with Monroe, Sterling and Atom.

She paces her kitchen in her evening clothes, restless, until Miller calls her.

“We didn’t get her,” is the first thing he says, and Clarke’s heart sinks. “This girl’s crazy, Clarke. The way she was driving... She shook all of us off, even Bellamy eventually. Damn near caused a traffic accident more than once.”

Josephine got away _again_. Fear rises in her throat, and she barely manages to tune in for the rest of Miller’s words.

“The police have her description, but they can’t do much, since she hasn’t actually done anything yet. Bellamy’s still out there looking,” Miller adds. Clarke looks at the clock. Bellamy must have been at this search for hours.

“No. Tell him to stop. She must be long gone.”

“I’ll tell him,” Miller agrees. “But I don’t think he’ll stop.”

—

Clarke gets ready for bed, but she doesn’t sleep. She stays on her computer, a renewed attempt at research on Josephine Lightbourne. According to the files Roan had given her, she’d had a prime symbol soulmark. Josephine’s ex-soulmate must be out there somewhere, if she can find them.

She opens up a soulmate dating site. There are tons of these, to connect people to their soulmates. She uploads a photo of Josephine’s now erased prime symbol and waits for the algorithm to find a match. It doesn’t.

She lets out a frustrated breath and keeps looking.

It’s four in the morning when she hears Bellamy get in. She waits to hear his footsteps go further into the house, but they don’t.

Eventually she gets up herself and goes to find him.

She finds him sitting in the front foyer with his back leaning against the front door, his forearms resting on his knees. He’s staring off into space. The only light is from the moon outside, cutting dimly across his cheekbones, and illuminating the tear on his jacket sleeve.

When he sees her coming down the hall, his eyes seem to take on a shine.

She sinks on her hands and knees in the foyer and crawls to sit across from him.

“Don’t,” he says, watching through half-lidded eyes, voice hoarse. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t what?”

“Get on the floor. You know I hate when you ruin your dresses for me.”

A small laugh escapes her. “Bellamy. It’s not a dress, it’s a nightie.” She probably should have put something on over top of it, but then she dismisses the thought. This is Bellamy. She has nothing to hide.

He doesn’t say anything for a minute. “I couldn’t find her.”

“Who? My little stalker?” She tries to sound casual about it and fails. The fact that someone’s out there, apparently always seeking her out and able to evade her security, is scary as all hell. “I didn’t even see her.”

“It was my job to catch her and I didn’t.”

He sounds so guilty that she has to lie. “Well, she doesn’t worry me. So she shouldn’t worry you. You tried your best.”

He’s silent for a second more. “I hear you in your nightmares sometimes, Clarke. These walls are thin.” She can’t speak, but he goes on, dully, as if reciting. “I hear you begging her not to kill anyone else you love. I hear you crying in your sleep and I just sit there on my side of the wall and tell myself I shouldn’t go over to your side and get in your bed and help you through it... the way we used to help each other.”

He closes his eyes as he confesses that last bit. She bites her lip, eyes burning, body burning, and looks away. She hadn’t realized her nightmares were so loud. She hadn’t realized he thought so often about the same things she did.

“I wish I could’ve caught her,” he says, and she looks up at him. His eyes are still closed, lashes casting long shadows over his face. “At least to end your nightmares.”

“They wouldn’t have ended. They would’ve just become about something different. Really, it’s nice that they’re getting predictable now.” She half-smiles at him, and after a moment he scoffs, opening his eyes to smile back.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s a real comfort.” They sit there on the floor in companionable silence for Clarke doesn’t know how long. Just that she starts to fiddle with the hem of nightie and trace the hairline cracks in the floor before he speaks again.

“How’s Spacewalker doing? Do you like him?” He seems to sense her hesitation. “Don’t lie. It won’t hurt me.”

“He’s fine. I like him fine.” Although tonight she didn’t. But there have been other times that she liked him so much it surprised her. Sometimes it feels like the world is simply bending her towards him.

Bellamy releases a sigh. “Good. That’s good.”

He looks lonely and sad despite his bravado. She scoots closer and puts her hand on his cheek. He finally opens his eyes.

“You’re special to me, Bellamy,” she tells him, with a fierce softness. “No matter how many soulmates the universe decided to throw at me. I could have a hundred soulmarks all over my arms and still none of them would touch the place in my heart for you.”

He inhales sharply, eyelashes fluttering. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

She probably wouldn’t if it was broad daylight outside, and he probably wouldn’t have said what he had either. There’s something about darkness that strips away the barrier between them. “It’s true.”

He’s silent, gazing at her, and then quite suddenly he presses his forehead against hers. Just for a few seconds, a few seconds that she leans right back, marvelling in how after all this time he is still the greatest balm to her nerves. And even though this moment only exists right now—in this strange vacuum of time between night and dawn—she knows that his breath on her cheek, the smell of him, the warmth of his gaze, will stay with her and calm her for days to come.

—

A few weeks later, Clarke has a breakthrough. She approaches Bellamy with it.

“I know who Josephine’s soulmate is.”

His eyebrows raise. “And you know this how?”

“Miller’s dad.” He’s a policeman in their home city. “I asked him to look one more time, see if there were any criminal records. There was a restraining order that wasn’t filed properly. Gabriel Santiago got it against Josephine.”

Understanding dawns on Bellamy’s face, then something grim. “You want to go talk to Gabriel.”

“He might have answers, Bellamy. He might be able to give us something.”

“Or he’s just as dangerous as she is.”

Clarke had considered that, too. “He’s married to someone else, with kids. He can’t be _that_ close to Josephine.”

“Why?” Bellamy asks quietly. “It’s impossible to be close to someone once they’re married?”

Clarke flushes at his meaning, at his meaningful gaze. “Okay, fine. But it’s worth the risk.”

Bellamy studies her another moment and nods. “Let me see his file.”

—

They go on the weekend, Clarke and her bodyguards. Clarke has his address. He lives in a middle-class neighbourhood, the sort of place with three story houses and white picket fences and trampolines in the backyards.

Clarke waits in the car with Bellamy while the rest of the team scope out the place first. When Atom radios the all-clear, Bellamy looks at her.

“You sure about this?”

She’s absolutely not, but... “I have to know if he can help us.” If he can stop her nightmares.

Bellamy holds her gaze another second before nodding. “Eyes sharp,” he says, and gets out of the car. Clarke follows suit.

Bellamy sticks close to her side as she walks to the door. Each step makes her more anxious. She rings the doorbell.

They only have to wait half a minute. They listen to the sounds of running within the house, of little feet and children laughing. Then heavier footsteps coming to the door. Clarke braces herself. In her peripheral vision, she watches Bellamy casually put his hand in his jacket pocket.

The door opens. A tall man opens the door, matching the description perfectly.

“Gabriel Santiago?” Clarke asks, and watches his face change from friendly, to wary. “Can I have a minute to talk?”

—

Gabriel lets them come just inside. Clarke catches a glimpse of his wife before she’s ushering the kids away, leaving them alone standing in the entrance to the house. There, Gabriel hears the whole story, the whole time rubbing at his wrist, and the prime symbol soulmark. And then sighs.

“I can’t help you.”

Clarke deflates. Bellamy says, “There must be something you can tell us.”

“I wish there was. But whatever you know is what I know. I met Josephine in passing when we were teenagers. She claimed to be my soulmate. She was… obsessed with the idea. Wouldn’t leave me alone. It got to the point where she was stalking me. Eventually she threatened my girlfriend.” His eyes flicker in the direction his wife had gone. “I got a restraining order. I haven’t seen her since. I’m sorry she’s doing it to you now, too.”

Clarke glances at Bellamy. He nods near imperceptibly; he believes Gabriel, too. There’s nothing else to learn here.

Clarke turns back to Gabriel. “Is there anything else you know about her that might help us?”

“Yeah.” Gabriel leans back, a humourless smile twisting his features. “Don’t underestimate her.”

—

They travel home. The trail goes cold from there, although Clarke keeps searching.

And then Clarke nears the end of her first year of medical school. Final exams approach fast, and it’s _not_ fun. Exams are a not so fun thing she has to deal with before she gets to go with Finn on his world tour for his new blockbuster movie.

She snaps at everybody when they try to interrupt her studying, including Finn.

“Alright, princess, I’ll leave you alone,” he says. “Just think… right afterwards, you get to come with me to the world premiere for my new movie…”

“That’s not helping. That’s actually more stressful to think about.”

Finn laughs and sends her a care package full of expensive spa products to “de-stress” or something. She doesn’t need to de-stress, she needs to _pass_.

Her clinical exams are a bigger issue than the written ones she’s studying for; at least the written ones, she can prepare for on her own. But she can’t do that with the practical ones. She tries practicing with her classmates, but she doesn’t know them well enough, and they keep asking casually prying questions. She supposes she can only blame herself for not trying harder to get them to like her as a person rather than as a celebrity.

She voices that to Bellamy one day, and he scoffs. “That’s on them if they don’t like you, Clarke.”

“Well, how am I supposed to practice for this?” she asks despairingly. He’s silent for a second. Then:

“Practice on me.”

She swallows and swivels in her chair. “That’s not in your job description,” she says evenly.

But a lot of things aren’t in the job description. Like stopping her from going into a spiral. Bringing her dinner when she’s stressed. Spending an entire night when he was supposed to be off-duty looking for her stalker.

Bellamy watches her. “It’s just an offer. Take it or leave it.”

She takes it.

In those few weeks before her exam he spends a lot more time on her side of the house. She’s glad it’s him helping her instead of Finn. Finn would sit here and crack lewd jokes about her playing doctor and comment on how kinky it was that she kept putting her hands all over him. Clarke would laugh. She wouldn’t be able to keep herself serious enough to study.

But Bellamy doesn’t do that; when it comes to work, he’s as serious as she is. He doesn’t make it weird when she has to pull up his shirt to listen to his heart, doesn’t smirk when she instructs him to open his mouth so she can look at his uvula. He sits completely still when she has to get right up in his face to use her ophthalmoscope. In fact he doesn’t blink at all, making it much easier to get a good look at the back of his eye, even though she knows from experience how uncomfortable it is.

He reads her preparation guide while she’s practicing on him and makes sure she comments on everything in the checklist. Sometimes he’ll even pretend to have a problem to make sure she’s paying attention; like she’ll tell him to walk around the room for the knee exam she’s practicing and he’ll add a slight limp that she barely catches. Or she’ll be listening to his lungs and he doesn’t inhale when she presses her stethoscope to the left side. It keeps her on her toes.

Then there’ll be other times when they’re out and about and Bellamy will say, “Hey. What nerve is this?” And points to some random part of his body. She’ll look down and tell him and he nods, satisfied, and she sort of has to hide her smile that he’s picking up so much of this just by helping her.

A few days before her exam her entire security detail shows up at the house.

Clarke frowns. “I’m not going anywhere today, you know.”

“Oh, we know,” Miller says, throwing his jacket on the hook. “We’re not here to work.”

Monroe, Sterling, Atom and Fox follow suit. Clarke looks at Bellamy, who’s standing there with his hands on his hips and looking right at her.

“You said it’d be better if you could practice on different people,” he says gruffly. “So I just…”

She’s never wanted to hug him so badly as she does right then.

—

Bellamy gets so invested in Clarke’s studying that even _he_ feels nervous when she goes into her first four-hour exams. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. He paces around campus for a little while, then heads back to the house for tea to give himself something to do. She’ll do well, he knows. She’ll pass the year just fine and move on to the next.

And he’ll be here, always right here.

He goes to the mailbox and notes there’s one large manila envelope addressed to him. He rips it open and finds it full of smaller letter envelopes.

He throws them on the kitchen table and makes his tea before sitting down to look at them. He intends to tear one open, at least until the logo on the envelope catches his eye.

It’s a university logo. An arts college. His mind blanks with confusion, refusing to sort it out. He spreads the rest of the envelopes on the table. All of them, from universities and colleges. Not huge, prestigious ones, but small or mid-sized universities. He recognizes them, though, because many years ago he’d considered them as an option, in moments of weakness.

His heart is beating too fast. He rips one open, and a letter spills out. He picks it up with trembling fingers.

 _Dear Mr. Blake_ , it reads. _Congratulations! We have reviewed your application and supporting documentation and are pleased to inform you of your acceptance to our program…_

He drops the paper like it’s on fire and reaches for the next one. And the next. A few of them are rejections, but many are not. They are acceptances to various English and literature and history programs across the country. So many applications he can’t wrap his mind around it. He never would’ve dreamed of spending so much money just on _applications_ —

Clarke.

His disbelief and shock quickly become eclipsed by anger. _Clarke_ did this. Clarke went behind his back and messed around with his life. God knows how long it took her to put together his applications for him.

She can’t have done it alone.

He drops the envelopes and calls his sister.

When she picks up, he spits, “You gave Clarke my college application stuff?”

“I was wondering when you’d call, big brother,” Octavia says in a bored tone. “She asked for them, so I told Mom to give them.”

“You didn’t have the right to do that.”

“I do what I want,” Octavia replies. “Now suck it up and go to college. Or at least go be mad at the person whose idea it was. Clarke clearly wants you off her back. Maybe you should take the hint.”

She hangs up on him, which is her favourite thing to do since she just fucking loves getting the last word. Instead of calling her back, Bellamy looks at the letters again. Each one has a deadline to accept within the next month.

He stuffs them back into their envelopes.

—

He’s waiting for Clarke when she comes out of her first exam, looking tired but relieved. He barely manages to keep his temper in check. She’s still got a few more exams to go and it doesn’t matter how angry he is, he’s _not_ going to mess this up for her.

She does seem to notice he’s quiet on the way home, though. “Are you okay?” she asks him, and he shrugs.

“I’m fine.”

He knows he’s not being super convincing but it’s the best he can do right now. He stays out of Clarke’s way for the rest of her exams week.

Then, she looks so beaten down and tired after her clinical exam that he keeps quiet even then. He gives her the night to rest and sleep.

It’s the morning—Saturday—and he listens to her walk around on her side of the house. From the sounds of it, she’s busy, packing things for her upcoming trip to Finn’s movie premiere, and on the phone with her people at Polaris. It doesn’t quiet down for a while. When it does, he gets up from his couch and knocks on their adjoining door.

She answers with her hair wrapped in a towel and eyes lit up. He holds up the envelopes.

Her smile falls. “Bellamy—”

“You,” he says, quietly, “don’t get to decide what I do with my life, alright? If I want to spend it protecting you then I will. If I don’t want to go back to school for my own damn reasons then I won’t. I don’t need you to treat me like a child and keep questioning me and then, when I say my decision is final, to go behind my back and do _this_. And I know you’re thinking I won’t stay angry,” he adds, seeing her expression flicker, “You’re thinking I won’t be able to resist and that I’ll take one of these offers. I’m going to tell you right now, I _won’t do that_. Because one of these days you have to accept that you can’t just make me do everything you want me to do.”

She has grown paler throughout his little speech, and when he’s done, having finally said his piece, she cries, “But I—I don’t want you to do this for _me_. I want you to do this for you.”

Because she has a very specific idea of what she wants his life to be and it’s so goddamn idealistic. There’s no future for him there. He sees that even if she doesn’t.

He drops the envelopes at her feet, turns on the heel and walks back into his side of the house.

—

Clarke doesn’t leave her house until two days later, when Finn comes to pick her up for the premiere. That’s the first time Bellamy sees her since confronting her, and he avoids her gaze yet again. He’s still mad.

He and the rest of Clarke’s and Finn’s details get on Finn’s private jet. They spend most of the flight in a huddle, because there’s a lot of details to iron out for the event. But Bellamy can’t help but sneak a glance at Clarke every once in a while.

Finn’s got her feet in his lap, massaging them. The guy’s clearly obsessed with her, and Bellamy wishes he could say it only started after their matching soulmarks were revealed, but that’s not the truth. Finn always had a thing for Clarke. And Clarke, well—he still remembers her saying Finn wasn’t _that bad_. She seems to be more relaxed with him each day. It’s happening, right in front of Bellamy’s eyes. The way the universe said it would.

He sure is starting to hate the universe.

—

At the premiere, as usual, Bellamy positions himself in close proximity to Clarke.

Often he assigns himself one of the more far away positions, where he can manage his team efficiently, but he always makes sure he’s close to Clarke at big events like this.

Clarke gives him a gentle smile when he opens the door of the limousine for her. The cameras flash when her face is revealed, and they flash especially frequently for the brief moments he’s holding her hand to help her out.

Finn follows, flashing his trademark grin, and Bellamy melts into position on the periphery of the red carpet.

Finn puts his hand on Clarke’s back and the photographers eat it up, perhaps even more than they did when she was standing next to Bellamy. She and Finn look like the perfect celebrity couple together. Meanwhile, Bellamy hangs to the side, in his nondescript Eligius suit, blending into the background.

Then there’s a bit of a press tour. Bellamy half-overhears the interviews while also listening to the conversations happening in his earpiece. Mostly, the reporters ask Finn about his movie, and don’t say much to Clarke except to compliment her dress. However, sometimes they veer into more personal topics.

One interviewer says to the two of them, “You’re both clearly so good together. How long have you known you were soulmates? A year?”

Finn grabs Clarke’s hand, giving her a truly sickening kiss on the cheek. It’s times like these Bellamy wishes he had a Gravol.

“Almost, yes,” Clarke says, a practiced princess smile on her face.

“How’s Bellamy taking it?”

The invasive question is posed casually, as it always is. Bellamy makes sure his face is a mask, knowing people must be watching him.

Clarke’s smile doesn’t even waver. The whole world thinks Bellamy and Clarke were involved at some point, but the press has been searching for official confirmation for years now. And neither Clarke nor Bellamy have ever given it to them. “Bellamy is a wonderful friend of mine,” she says. “He’s very happy for us.”

Yeah, that might be stretching things just a bit.

“And we’re all very happy for Finn,” Clarke adds, “because this movie is one of his best.”

That steers the conversation back to the film, and Bellamy’s able to relax a bit.

The event continues, and the red carpet appears to stretch on forever. The seventh circle of hell, by Bellamy’s measure. He’s starting to sweat in his suit under the lights as Finn and Clarke start signing autographs. He can tell she’s starting to get overwhelmed with the attention, even with Sterling and Atom to pull people back.

In his ear, the routine check-in is happening again. Each entrance and exit is mentioned as clear, nothing to report, or if there was trouble, what it was, how it was dealt with. Bellamy listens to each team report. They’ve just gotten past team nine and are waiting for team ten to report. The earpiece crackles with static. Team ten does not report.

“Team ten?” a voice in his ear says. “Report.”

Bellamy’s eyes skitter over the huge crowd in front of him. It’s hard to see any individual face when all the lights are flashing at his eyes. People blur together, but as a tinny voice in his ear calmly asks team ten to report again, his stomach swoops, and time seems to slow to a crawl.

Finn’s kneeling next to a toddler to sign a T-shirt. Clarke’s next to him signing a copy of the movie she was in.

Bellamy’s moving before the first gunshot even rings out.

The effect is instantaneous. Instant chaos.

People scream, and scatter. Interviewers duck their heads mid-question and run. Celebrities who were on the carpet immediately are shielded by their bodyguards—but Clarke and Finn were too close to the fans.

The crowd seems to froth and overboil, people spilling over the lines, jumping over each other, panic making everything more intense. Bellamy loses sight of Clarke for a second; he fights through the crowd, elbowing his way through, to get to her.

She’s still right where she was standing, and Finn’s still right where he was kneeling with the T-shirt he’d been signing. It’s completely automatic for Bellamy to run right in front of Clarke—just as another gunshot rings out, and his left leg buckles.

He crashes hard into the ground. People stumble over him, step on him, at least until they’re not, and Bellamy realizes Clarke has crawled on top of him, shielding him with her body.

That’s so wrong, he thinks through his haze of shock. She shouldn’t be protecting him. That’s _his_ job.

He realizes dimly that she’s screaming, too, for people to get away, to give them space. It feels like an eternity before more of the security officers are with them, surrounding them so that the overzealous crowd can’t get into their bubble.

Clarke gets off him, and Bellamy attempts to get to his hands and knees. He feels nauseous, and looks down at his leg. The black cloth of his pants over his thigh is wet and shiny. The carpet beneath him is soaked—blood. So much blood. That bullet hit something.

He overhears Sterling telling Clarke they have to get her out of here. Finn’s already been escorted off the scene. Bellamy struggles up. He can’t.

Clarke’s next to him on her knees, destroying yet another beautiful dress for him as she rips a strip of fabric off and starts tying it around his thigh.

He grits out, “Clarke, I’m _fine_.”

She ignores him, and cinches her makeshift tourniquet so tight he has to fight back against the sound that wants to come out of his throat.

Instead, he barks at the security team, “Get her out of here.”

As usual, Clarke has other ideas. When Sterling and Atom reach for her, she pulls away, snapping, “No.”

Bellamy levels Sterling and Atom with a glare. “Did you not hear me?”

Then at once, Sterling and Atom wrench her to her feet with no hesitation this time. Clarke fights them, nearly feral, but Miller joins in as well. Her eyes become wide when they overpower her. “No, please! I can’t leave him! No! Bellamy!”

“He’s going to be okay,” Miller yells at her. “Come on, Clarke. You can’t be out in the open like this, you have to get somewhere safe...”

They drag her away, and only once her voice has faded into the distance does he allow himself to feel pain.

—

Clarke isn’t allowed to go see Bellamy for the entire night.

She’s forced to wait many hours in a safe location with Finn. There are security checks, and interrogation, and police. Between every other question she gets asked, she asks how Bellamy is, if anyone’s seen him, if he’s okay. Everyone keeps telling her they don’t know. She can tell everyone’s getting annoyed with her but she can’t stop.

Eventually Miller texts her. He’d stayed with Bellamy, and says he’s stable at the local emergency room. It’s only slightly reassuring, in that she knows he’s alive. But she needs to see it for herself.

It had all happened so fast. One moment she was staring out into the crowd, then a gunshot had rung out. Bellamy had hurtled right in front of her and Finn. Then he’d crumpled to the floor, and for a split second she’d thought the worst. The absolute worst.

And it was terrifying.

The truth wasn’t much better. The bullet had blasted right through his leg. He’d been so pale. His blood was everywhere. It’s still soaking the front of her dress, still staining her hands.

As the hours pass, more about the situation becomes clear. As it turns out, the shooter was found to be a random reporter at the event. The reporter’s in custody, she’s told, but he keeps denying the gun was his. Apparently he keeps insisting it was pressed into his hands seconds after it was fired, and he never saw who it was.

But Clarke knows who it was. Deep in her bones, she knows. Even if there’s no proof.

But right now, she doesn’t care. She only cares about seeing Bellamy.

She’s given the green light to leave early in the morning. Finn comes with her to the hospital, but when they get there, she sprints down the hall, not even waiting for him. Miller’s told her where in the emergency department they are. Bay eleven.

But when she gets there, there’s no stretcher there. No one’s there at all. She wheels around on the spot, not caring how crazy she must look. _Where is he_?

She practically collides with a young nurse as she wheels around a second time. “Where is he?” she can’t help but say, almost incoherently. “Where is he?”

“Slow down, miss. I don’t even know who you’re talking about,” the nurse says sternly, and then seems to do a double take, as if recognizing her. “Ah, never mind. Bellamy Blake’s in the overflow bay. I can take you there—”

“Is he okay?” she asks hurriedly as she follows the nurse.

“Yes, yes. He’s doing well. The bullet hit a blood vessel, but it narrowly missed his femoral. He was very lucky.”

It could’ve been different. So easily, a few millimeters one way or another, and he might’ve bled out in her arms. And for what?

They approach the overflow bay. It’s full of other patients on stretchers, separated only by thin curtains. There’s so many people here. She knows she draws the eye of many when she strides into the room, and finally zeroes in on Bellamy in the corner, where the curtains haven’t quite been drawn entirely, and she can see a sliver of his face.

Clarke mutters a thank you to the nurse and pushes the curtain out of her way.

The little space is already crowded; two nurses, a doctor, a lab tech drawing blood. And several Eligius officers around the stretcher.

Bellamy’s sitting up on the stretcher, still looking somewhat pale. He’s in a hospital gown, an IV in his hand, heavy bandages wrapped around his leg. He sees her and his expression softens, relieved. At least, until she speaks.

“You're fired.”

Stunned silence hits the room. Conversations from nearby beds falter, too. The healthcare staff look up from their work The entire Eligius team seems rendered speechless. It’s probably not every day one of their officers gets fired for doing their job.

Bellamy recovers first. “You don't mean that.”

“Yes, I do,” Clarke shoots back, only dimly aware of all the people witnessing this. But she doesn’t care. Her emotions are running too high right now. She looks to the nearest Eligius officer. She doesn’t recognize them, but they must’ve been working the event tonight. “I’m terminating Bellamy Blake’s contract early. Please let your superiors know I’ll need a replacement.” The officer nods quickly.

Bellamy speaks again, quiet. “Clarke, stop. Think about this.”

She can’t take the wounded look in his eye, so she fixes her gaze beyond his shoulder instead, at the monitor hooked up to his vitals, the ECG tracing of his heart. “Miller.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Miller’s never called her that before in his life.

“If Bellamy comes back to my home, or my school, or my place of work, escort him off the premises immediately." She pauses, thinks better of it, because Bellamy is sitting there suspiciously quietly. She knows he’s too clever to get caught by his colleagues.

She looks at Bellamy again, makes her next words an icy promise. "If I ever see you again, I _will_ file for a restraining order."

That one hits. She can tell from the way his eyes widen. "Don't do this, Clarke.”

She should've done it a long time ago.

“Take it back,” Bellamy says, louder, more desperate. No one else is moving or talking. He starts to rise, then pales, his injured leg crumpling. A nurse and Miller grab his arms, forcing him back to the bed. Clarke turns and heads to the door. His voice rises. “Take it back, Clarke!” he shouts. “ _Take it back_!”

The fact that he's losing it and the fact that she already wants to take it back solidifies her decision.

She gets in his face.

" _You are not going to die for me_ ,” she snarls. "You are going to live. Whether you like it or not."

She spins on the heel and leaves.

—

“I’ll be honest, Bellamy. The optics aren’t good,” Pike says.

They’re sitting in his office yet again. It’s been a week since Clarke let him go. He still can’t believe she let him go.

“You’ve been fired by two prominent celebrities, neither of whom gave a reason, and one of them made it very public. It’s bad luck for you.”

Or a very calculated move by Clarke. If she shits on his reputation at Eligius, she probably hopes he’ll take one of those damn acceptance letters.

“Some of the Eligius higher ups are taking a closer look at you. Especially since you were apparently threatened with a restraining order. Given the… nature of your past relationship with Clarke Griffin, some people at this organization think you may have overstepped some professional boundaries with her.”

Bellamy feels colour rise to his face. “I didn’t, sir.” He tries to keep the outrage out of his voice.

“I know you didn’t, Bellamy.” Pike reclines in his seat. “But the problem is I can’t convince everybody of that, and they take these types of infractions very seriously. But here’s what I can do: I can offer you a spot in one of our paramilitary units once your leg heals up. Something under the radar, maybe even overseas, until this all settles down. But I’ll warn you right now that under the radar usually means highly dangerous.”

Clarke yelling at him to _live!_ echoes through his head.

Thinking about it makes him angry. So angry it hurts, deep in his chest where he already feels desperately broken. She cut him loose. He’s still reeling from the disbelief that she actually _did_ it. The entire room heard her say she never wanted to see his face again.

Well, he can damn sure make that happen.

Pike goes on. “It’s a one year contract, and then you’ll be back, and hopefully all this will have blown over. You can take a few days to think about it.”

Bellamy can’t help the spite that filters into his words. “When do I leave?”

And that’s that.

—

Miller becomes Clarke’s new chief of security.

But she’s entirely unable to enjoy her summer off from school. She cries a lot. Wakes up from nightmares a lot. Sometimes they’re about Josephine, but mostly they’re about Bellamy.

The press has a field day with the whole thing. Her last shouting match with Bellamy was way too public for it not to be. She regrets how it sounded now; like she hated him. There’s far too much speculation on what happened between them, especially when she told a reporter earlier in the evening that he was a wonderful friend only to later threaten him with a restraining order.

She can handle it when they demonize her. But she can’t when they start demonizing _him_.

Finn definitely notices how much she’s moping around. One day in August he catches her watching celebrity TV, watching experts speculate on what Clarke Griffin’s deal with Bellamy Blake was, and he turns the TV off. “You did the right thing, Clarke.”

Clarke snaps. “Of course _you_ think I did the right thing. You never even liked him.”

“Sure, I have my own reasons,” Finn agrees. “That doesn’t mean I don’t see yours. I get it, Clarke. We all saw the way he lost it when you fired him. The guy’s obsessed with you. You had to cut him loose for his own good.”

Clarke doesn’t bother to correct Finn—that she had to cut _herself_ loose just as much as him. Bellamy is not one to lose his cool around other people if he can help it. But he, unlike everyone else in the room, knew the levels to what she was saying when she fired him. He’d looked so betrayed. Which wasn’t fair, especially when she was only agreeing to something he had told her once before.

 _You can’t have friends like us_.

He was right. They absolutely can’t.

When she doesn’t argue anymore, Finn seems satisfied. He pats her back, and before he can walk away, Clarke grabs his arm and drags him down on the couch with her. Climbs on top of him.

“Princess,” Finn says with an arched brow. “What are you—”

“Shut up,” Clarke says raggedly. “Just, for once in your life, shut up.”

—

That night, Clarke confirms it for herself. The sex was fine. If she’d never done it with Bellamy she’d think it was great.

Finn cracked jokes the entire way throughout. She’d laughed, forgotten herself, forgotten her problems. Exactly what she had been hoping for.

Except when it was over, bitterness creeped back in. She knows she shouldn’t compare. She knows it’s always different, always a little weird the first time with a new partner. They have to learn each other, and that’s normal. But she can’t shake the part of her that thinks it will never be quite as good as it was with her best friend who sought to understand her inside out, knew everything she wanted, and paid attention to the details she didn’t voice. Just as she feared, Bellamy fucking ruined her.

Yet, she still wouldn’t take it back.

—

It’s fall and Clarke is dying to know how Bellamy is doing. She’s been keeping an eye on the tabloids, but not even they have had new photos of him for months.

She’s starting to worry.

She supposes she could pick up the phone and call Octavia or Aurora. But she simply can’t risk that it would get back to Bellamy that she’d called. He can’t know that she was wondering about him. She refuses to give him false hope.

She debates going to Eligius and asking them instead. But no. Again, she doesn’t know Bellamy’s superiors well enough to know if they’d tell him. There’s only one person she can trust.

She sits down in her first week back at school and writes an email to Roan. His service is spotty at times, and they only correspond every once in a while, but she needs this. She asks him in her email if he can, in strict confidence, poke around with his Eligius contacts and see what happened to Bellamy after she fired him, if he left the organization or stayed or really anything else they know.

Roan’s reply comes a few days later, and it’s short. _Glad you’re okay. No one I talked to knows where he’s stationed, if he is still at Eligius at all. Higher ups are keeping tight-lipped about him. They’re not happy with what down_. _Reputations to maintain and all_.

That makes Clarke feel sort of guilty. She ignores Roan’s sign-off, which is _By the way, you’re an idiot,_ and logs out of her email. She has to hope Bellamy’s okay, that they can both finally move on with their lives now. He can pursue a career wherever he wants, make friends, have fun, go to school, even—her stomach clenches—date again. But he deserves that. He deserves every happiness life can give him, and he can’t have that if he’s always with Clarke. She and him together were a dead end. She has to hope that in time he’ll understand what she did. Even if he hates her for it right now.

They have that in common, at least.

—

Clarke starts dating Finn in earnest through her second year of med school. She throws herself into the relationship with a determination that surprises both her and Finn. But he’s obviously happy about it.

The cameras catch them kissing one day. It’s all over the gossip sites. _Finally!_ They say.

Clarke hopes Bellamy still doesn’t look at gossip sites. She closes her laptop when she finds herself thinking that.

—

Bellamy still haunts her in the oddest moments. Like when she’s in a clinical session at school, and trying to practice her ophthalmoscopy on a classmate, but they keep blinking and it’s irritating enough that Clarke just thinks about how _Bellamy_ had been the perfect model patient to practice on.

Or when Monty’s parents send her a Christmas card, and the memories of those now distant times make her useless for the entire rest of the day, and she just lies in bed and clutches the card to her chest and thinks about flying a kite in a windstorm.

Or really, every time she looks up at the night sky and sees Wells.

She tries to tell him one night, when she’s home for Christmas break and right before New Year’s, about what happened with Bellamy. She chokes up and can’t continue. Instead she decides to tell him about Finn.

“He’s growing on me, but he’s not you,” she whispers. “No one could be you. I’ll always love you first, forever.”

She doesn’t feel bad about saying it, either. The universe got it right when it gave her Wells. She’s still not sold on Finn.

—

Finn has a big party to welcome the new year, and Clarke runs into Raven there.

Clarke has only met Raven a few times since that initial time at Bellamy’s wedding. But every time they’ve met, Clarke has looked down at that raven soulmark and debated whether to say anything.

Tonight, Raven doesn’t much look like she’s enjoying the party. She sort of looks miserable, in fact. So Clarke makes a decision. Let Raven have her happiness. Just because something’s wrong with Clarke and she can’t make herself feel the right things about her soulmates doesn’t mean everyone is like her.

She turns to her. “I think I know your soulmate.”

Raven blinks and stares at her. “What?”

The words pour out of Clarke very fast. “There was a biology TA at the university where I did my undergrad. Her name was Luna. She’s really sweet. And… she’s got a raven soulmark.”

Raven doesn’t say anything for a long moment. There’s something building behind her dark eyes, although Clarke can’t figure out what it is until she speaks. “And how long have you known about this?”

Clarke winces internally at the vitriol in Raven’s voice. “Well, since we first met.”

“And you hid it that whole time? Who gave you the right?”

Clarke had expected Raven to be angry, and gives her the truthful explanation. “I just—I thought, I wasn’t sure if you’d even want to know.”

Raven laughs, and the sound is loud, attracting stares. “You know what _I_ think, Clarke?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “I think you like to decide what’s best for people. I bet Bellamy would agree.”

Clarke flinches. Raven’s not done.

“And now you’ve decided to tell me why? Because you think if you can pair me up with my soulmate, that’ll make _your_ life easier?”

Clarke’s brow furrows. “What does that mean?”

“What do you _think_ it means? You got _your_ soulmate. Finn.”

Clarke stares until she grasps her meaning.

Raven. Raven is the person Finn ended a relationship with to be with Clarke. Just like Bellamy with Clarke, Raven has been on the sidelines, watching someone she cared about find their soulmate that wasn’t them.

Raven smiles bitterly at her silence.

“Wow. He didn’t even tell you, huh. Well, congratulations, you’re _both_ great at keeping secrets. No wonder you’re soulmates.”

And with that last spiteful word, Raven spins on the heel and strides away.

—

Clarke finds Finn later during the party. Things have taken a drunken turn; he’s standing on the table, playing his guitar. Really, really badly, on purpose.

When he sees her, he holds out a hand for her to join him. People cheer her on when in reality all she wants to do is ask him about Raven.

But there’s too many people here. Clarke’s not one to make a scene. She’s already had too much publicized drama in her life.

So she smiles and takes his hand, letting him bring her up to the table with him as the New Year’s countdown starts.

Raven’s nowhere to be seen.

—

The next morning, Clarke asks him about it once the guests have all cleared out of his mansion. Finn is quiet for a moment.

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think it mattered.”

Clarke can’t wrap her mind around that. “But she’s your best friend.”

“I didn’t say _she_ didn’t matter. Just that, like I said, she’s not my soulmate. We talked about it. Yeah, Raven’s still a little bitter. I would be too, if she found her soulmate first.” Finn grabs the guitar beside him and strums it, a minor chord. “I’m glad you told her about this Luna person. Raven can be happy, and maybe we can get back to how we used to be.”

Clarke bites back what she wants to say. That things are never going back to how they used to be, which she knows from experience with Bellamy.

But maybe that was just unique to them. Maybe other people, normal people, are able to move past that, to not be so hung up on each other that they end up destroying whatever was between them. So she keeps quiet.

“Are you happy now?” Finn says, playing a few more notes on the guitar. “I mean, I know you’re never happy, you’re like the brooding superhero I played in my last movie—but are you less pissed off?”

Clarke can’t help but smile a little. “Yeah, I guess.”

He sets the guitar aside. “Good. Because there’s about fifty restaurants in this town I _have_ to take you to before you go back to school.”

—

At the end of her second semester of med school, Finn congratulates her by taking her to a football game.

This in itself is not odd. She’d told him once that Wells’ father used to take them to games when they were young, and it’s sort of thoughtful, really, that he’s brought her to one.

At least that’s what she thinks until halftime, when the Jumbotron focuses in on them.

Clarke shrinks down in her seat. She’d been in the middle of eating a hot dog, for the love of god—she does _not_ need that picture on the internet for every Photoshopper to play with.

Someone’s yelling at them to kiss. Clarke hates this, but she knows the camera won’t leave her alone until she does. She turns to Finn.

But he’s not in his seat. He’s on one knee in the aisle.

Clarke’s heart leaps into her throat and stays there, lodged in her throat as he slowly pulls a ring out of his pocket. It’s gigantic. The diamonds on it are insane, sparkling, must have cost—she doesn’t even know what it would have cost. Way too much.

“Will you marry me?” Finn says. People around them are jumping up and down waiting for Clarke’s response. A fangirl three rows down screams, “Yes!” The noise level in the stadium has risen to critical levels. Everyone’s eyes are on her.

As always, Clarke smiles for the cameras. As always, her life is a production, and the opinions of everyone in the world depend on her performance.

She accepts the ring, and leans down to kiss him like any grateful fiancee in love should. The cheering becomes deafening.

Clarke breaks the kiss after only a moment, and whispers, “We’ll talk about this later.”

Finn’s eyes flicker. But Clarke extends her hand, and he puts the ring on her.

—

That night, they’re back at Finn’s mansion, on separate couches. Silent. Clarke’s on her phone, scrolling through Twitter reactions to the public proposal. Finn always did like to entertain. She’d found it charming in the past, but not today. Not at all. Especially not when she sees that her performance had not been convincing enough.

_Is it just me or did she hesitate?_

_She definitely didn’t look happy._

Finn Collins _proposed to her and she barely even smiled. Ungrateful bitch!_

_What is wrong with her? Seriously, why’d she get two soulmates? I’ve only got one and I still haven’t found them yet. I’d kill to be her!_

_Hahahah maybe Clarke will kill Finn just like she did with Wells Jaha—_

She puts down her phone and finally speaks.

“I’m not ready to be married, Finn.”

Finn looks up from his own phone, sees that she’s finally ready to talk, and pockets it. He leans forward, gaze earnest. “I’m not saying we have to get married tomorrow. Or even in the next year. I just wanted to do something special for you.”

“In front of a crowd of thousands of people?”

“It was supposed to be memorable! Romantic!” He rakes a hand through his hair, looking frustrated. “How was I supposed to know you might say no when _I’m your soulmate_?”

She flinches, knowing he’s right. There shouldn’t be any doubt. When the universe gives you a gigantic neon arrow pointing to the love of your life, you’re not supposed to hesitate. What the hell is wrong with her?

“Give me time,” she ends up saying, desperately. And because he’s looking at her suspiciously now, she quickly adds, “You know how things ended with my first soulmate, Finn. It wasn’t good. When you proposed, it just brought those memories back.”

It’s a lie, of course. She’s not hesitating because of _Wells_. But Finn seems to buy it. He nods.

—

Bellamy arrives back in the country after his year abroad for work, and the first thing he sees after coming through his gate at the airport is a tabloid on a magazine rack nearby with Clarke and Finn’s faces plastered on it.

Because he’s a masochist, he draws closer, and his stomach drops. ENGAGED! Screams the headline. He pivots and walks away before he can read anything else on the cover. Well, he shouldn’t be surprised. He wonders if this is how Clarke felt when he got engaged to Gina. Like the last dregs of happiness in her life were being pulled through her fingers.

He goes to a bar that night and takes home with him the first person that hits on him. She’s got pretty eyes, and he tells her so. It’s only when they’re in bed together that he realizes this woman—who’s blonde, by the way—has a particularly _familiar_ shade of blue eyes.

Clarke fucking ruined him.

—

A few days later, once he’s over his jetlag, he finds himself at Eligius headquarters in his home city once again, sitting in the chair in front of Pike’s desk.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Pike says. “I’m happy to say things have more or less blown over. But I wouldn’t advise you to do any high profile work for a long time.”

“Understood.” He prefers to be out of spotlights anyway.

“There’s another year-long contract here locally I thought you’d be perfect for. You’d be working closely with the government and with the police. Only our best get recommended for the job. Good pay, too.”

Bellamy is already nodding before Pike has finished speaking. Idly, he wonders if he might live the whole rest of his life like this: passionless, always jumping on the next contract that comes his way, if only so he never stops moving long enough to have regrets. “I’ll take it, sir.”

—

Clarke’s at home a few days after the proposal when flowers are sent to her door, with an apology message. _Forgive me_?

Finn. She thanks the butler who brought her the flowers. Then she calls Finn.

No answer. She frowns, trying a few times, because sometimes he’s just awful about answering his phone, but still. Nothing. She sets it down and forgets about it for a few hours, working on a painting in her study until she finally gets a call back from him.

Her fingers are stained with acrylic paint. She wipes them on her shirt, only to realize she was actually wearing a dress, and an expensive one to boot. If Bellamy were here he’d be devastated.

That thought actually makes her grin a bit. She wonders if eventually it will always be like this—that she will be able to think of him and be happy instead of sad. It gives her hope.

She brings the phone to her ear as she heads to the sink. “Finn, listen to me, I’m sorry how I reacted—”

“Hello, Clarke.”

Clarke stops dead in her tracks. The voice is sugary, light, and feminine. It’s definitely not Finn.

“Who is this?” Clarke asks slowly. “Where’s Finn?”

“Isn’t that the question?” the cheery voice drawls. “Well, you can talk to your soulmate for a second, I suppose.” A rustling sound, then Finn’s voice, clear as day.

“Clarke, don’t listen to a word she says, she’s going to—”

A muffled cry, and the sound of something blunt hitting skin. Clarke clutches the phone to her ear in horror. “N—no—Finn? _Finn_?”

The cheery voice comes back on. “God, does he ever shut up?”

Clarke forces herself to breathe, to make her voice even. “Josephine.”

“Ding ding! Give the girl a prize.”

Clarke puts her on speaker. She opens her microphone app and hits record as she says, “Josephine, what do you want?”

“Oh, Clarke. Really? You don’t know what this is about?”

Clarke does know what it’s about. She remembers Bellamy getting shot in the leg. But now that she thinks about it, that was a very lousy shot if it was meant to kill Clarke. It would’ve just hit her in the leg, too.

But Finn… Finn had been kneeling to sign an autograph. If she had to guess, that bullet that had gone into Bellamy’s thigh had been eye-level with Finn.

Josephine goes on.

“But we can talk in person. I’m planning to kill Finn tonight,” she says casually, and Clarke sinks to her knees, clutching onto the wall as her worst fears are confirmed. “His fans would be really disappointed if I did. But you can stop it. If you don’t talk to the police or anyone else, and you come alone, tonight, at midnight. I’ll be watching.” Her voice becomes sly. “I’ve been watching you a very long time.”

A chill runs down Clarke’s spine. She closes her eyes. “Don’t hurt him. Tell me where and I’ll be there.”

“You think I’m stupid? I’ll tell you right when I want to tell you. Just to give you enough time to get here by midnight, and not tell anyone about our little party. But I’m betting you already know where to find us.”

The line goes dead, and Clarke is left staring in horror.

—

“They said you knew where to find them?” The Eligius officer says slowly. Clarke rubs her eyes and glances at the clock. She hasn’t left home. She’s too afraid to. Josephine could be watching her right now. She can’t go to the police station in person, but she’s damn well not sitting around.

“Yes,” she replies, trying not to let her frustration show. Here she is relaying her story for the millionth time. Replaying the recording she made. She’s already spoken to the police, and Finn’s security detail, and now Eligius. Apparently Finn usually has a tracker in his shoe, but he was taken from his home, where he hadn’t been wearing it, so that’s damn useless.

Even intelligence has gotten involved, and yet, they haven’t found him. It’s eight at night. The police have tried tracing Finn’s phone. Dead, at the side of the road. Time is running out.

“Well, can you think of what she might be talking about?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” she snaps, rubbing her eyes.

“Well, keep thinking. It hasn’t gotten out to the press yet and we want to keep it that way. Thanks for your cooperation, Clarke. We’ll find your soulmate.”

She thanks him and hangs up. Stares at her hands, where red acrylic paint has dried. Then she stands to get changed.

—

Bellamy’s at work, helping with a transfer of military weapons, when they get called away from their job. Something about an emergency mission, apparently. A highly executive principal who had contracted Eligius for security has been _kidnapped_.

And it’s Finn. Of course it’s Finn. Bellamy immediately volunteers to be part of the team. Not because he has any soft feelings towards the guy, but for Clarke’s sake.

Clarke. What the hell must she be thinking right now?

He answers that question himself while in the briefing room. Clarke’s thinking something stupid. Really, really stupid.

He makes an executive decision and slips out.

—

Clarke has just slipped into a nondescript pair of leggings and black sweater when she hears the floor creak in the hallway. She freezes, then grabs the gun Miller had given her off the table.

If someone’s gotten past her security, her bodyguards, everybody—well, Josephine comes to mind immediately. She raises the gun, takes a slow, controlled breath to focus, and wraps her finger around the trigger. Then steps into the hall and into view.

It’s Bellamy.

He’s stepping over her shoes as if he’d just walked in. He jerks back a bit when he sees the barrel of the gun pointed at him. Clarke releases a gasping breath and lowers it. “God, Bellamy, I almost shot you!” She pauses. “What are you doing here? How did you—” She shakes her head. Never mind. Her brain’s too overwhelmed to process any of this right now. She’s seeing him for the first time after a year, and well, she’d be lying if she said it didn’t affect her, but she’s always been good at compartmentalizing. “I told you what would happen if I saw you again.”

“Does it look like I care?” he responds, stalking closer, and _god_ , his voice, she’s missed that tenor, and she didn’t even realize how much until right now. “Get your restraining order, then. I only need to say this once.”

“What?”

“Don’t go after Finn.”

She looks at him squarely even as her heart thuds painfully in her chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do.”

It all clicks together. Bellamy’s not wearing an Eligius jacket. He’s in nondescript, all black gear. But there’s only one way he could know about Finn’s kidnapping since it’s all hush hush. If he were part of the team.

“You still work there?” she manages. “At Eligius?”

“I work paramilitary now. Protecting high risk assets,” he says, and seems to enjoy the fear on her face. “Car chases. Lots of fights. An explosion or two, once in a while.”

“God, Bellamy—if you’re risking your life to spite me—”

“I’m not here to talk about that. Just promise me you won’t go after Finn. Let us take care of it.”

“Why would I do something that stupid?”

He gives her a bored look. “Because I know you, Clarke. And you can’t just sit around while other people risk their lives for _your_ soulmate. Especially not after what happened to Wells.”

She sucks in a breath. “Well, you don’t have to worry. Because I’m not going to do that.”

“Promise me first.”

“I promise.”

“Good.”

“Get out, then.”

She makes it sound like an order, and she sees his eyes darken. He starts backing away, and she exhales, turning to go back to her study. How does he always know exactly what she’s thinking? What happened to Wells… she can’t have a repeat. Like having her soulmark is a mark for death. She can’t, she can’t, she can’t. She can’t get out of her head the remembrance of his blood on the floor of the kitchen…

She stops in her tracks in her study. Then she pulls out her phone and dials the number she’d been given by the police and Eligius, because she knows where Josephine has got Finn.

—

Bellamy leaves Clarke’s property the same way he came in, and heads back to Eligius. He does not believe Clarke’s words one bit. But that’s alright. He wasn’t there for that anyway.

In fact, he hadn’t even meant to be seen by Clarke. He was only going to sneak in and out. But she’d heard him, so of course he’d talked to her, made her make promises he knew she wouldn't keep. Anything to stop her from examining the real reason he was there, in her front foyer.

Dropping one of Finn’s old trackers in her shoe.

—

Clarke talks again to the team being mobilized. She’s almost certain Finn’s being held in the old Griffin mansion, where this had all started.

The property has been abandoned for years. It was sold and never lived in after the deaths of Jake Griffin and Wells and their attackers.

A lot of memories here, Clarke thinks, staring at her old house from a distance. She’s in her car, parked at the side of the road. Warring with herself.

A lot of things make sense to Clarke now. Why Shumway and Dax had been pissed her mother wasn’t there to see Jake die. They’d wanted to kill her soulmate in front of her as payback.

And now Clarke is certain Josephine wants the same for her. She’d tried to kill Finn at his movie premiere before. And before, at the gala when Clarke was at his side.

But if Josephine realizes the Eligius teams have arrived, she might cut her losses. She might just kill him. What if Clarke did the wrong thing?

In the end, Clarke can’t just do nothing. She makes sure her gun is loaded. Then she gets out of her car.

But she only gets a few steps before there’s a blow to the back of her head, and she blacks out.

—

Bellamy periodically looks at Clarke’s dot on his tracker screen as they creep through the woods around the acreage of the old Griffin property. She’s staying in her car for now. _Stay there_ , he wills her. _Don’t come any closer. Don’t let your guilt get you killed_.

Still keeping an eye on her, he feels like he’s being hit with memories as he makes his way through the woods on the property. He passes that bent part of the fence he and Clarke had used to sneak away. And then here, in this clearing, he and Clarke and Wells had played frisbee. There by those rose bushes, Octavia and Clarke had made flower crowns, and Clarke had put one on his head. That was before they were friends. And over there—further ahead—there’s the pool Clarke had shoved that rich kid into. The same pool he and Clarke had their first real conversation.

He’s hit with memories over and over, and tries to tune them out, although it’s hard. Josephine might not be working alone. They have to be careful. Avoid being seen. Or else she might kill Finn.

Clarke would never forgive herself if there were a repeat. He hefts the gun on his shoulder, sweat trickling down his brow, and checks the tracker. Clarke’s still on the side of the road. He’s about to put it away, but then he does a double take and looks back at the screen.

Unexpectedly, Clarke’s dot has started moving away. Fast, like she’s in her car.

He frowns, even though it’s exactly what he’d prayed she’d do. Because it was exactly that—an empty prayer. He knew Clarke wouldn’t back down. He’d been fully prepared to have to go stop her.

So why has she turned around and gone—gone so fast, too?

He’s starting to get a bad feeling in his gut. It’s not something he can explain to anyone, much less the Eligius officers on his intercom. He has no evidence at all, no real reason to ruin this mission.

But it niggles at him. It’s _Clarke_. So he makes the decision, quick. Even though it’s not right, and when Eligius finds out he went rogue in the middle of a crisis, he’s for sure fired.

He taps to a private channel to Miller. Someone has to know what he’s done or otherwise they’ll think something bad happened to him. And then they’ll stop the mission—but just in case Bellamy’s hunch is wrong, he needs them to continue. “Atlas abandoning ship,” he says.

“Atlas—” Miller stops. That’s Bellamy’s own code name. “Wait, what are you—”

He drops his comm in the dust and grinds it with the heel of his shoe, turns back around and melts into the forest.

—

Clarke wakes up because someone is snapping her fingers in her face.

“Ah, there she is!”

Clarke blinks. There’s a dull throbbing behind her eyes. The next thing she notices is that she’s completely upright, suspended from somewhere by her arms, her shoes just touching the floor enough that she can put some weight on her tiptoes. She squints and looks up. Her wrists are chained to what appears to be a long, narrow conveyor above her, the metal digging painfully into her skin.

She tugs experimentally. No give.

“Hell-o-o-o. I’m talking to you.”

Clarke whips her head to the side, and her kidnapper comes into focus, standing beside her. Josephine Lightbourne in the flesh. She looks different from her graduation photos. Her hair’s more scraggly. Her clothes, old and faded. A little gaunter too. She’s been off the grid for a while, that’s for sure.

Josephine twirls a strand of hair around her finger and grins at Clarke. “Nice of you to join the land of the living. For now, anyway.”

Clarke takes another look around, hit with the smell of rust and rot. It appears to be a dilapidated commercial factory space, full of junk and rusty tanks and machinery that looks like it hasn’t been used in decades.

And through it all, Clarke hears a slight whirring sound.

“Not the nicest place, huh? Nothing like the sweet little mansion you’re used to.” Josephine spreads her arms as Clarke cranes her head, trying to figure out where the sound is coming from. “I knew you’d backstab me and talk to the cops even when I told you not to. Actually, I sort of counted on it. Now they’re all over there, and it’s just us here.”

“Where are we?”

“An old Arkadia production facility. They manufactured pills and blister packs here. At least until it was shut down, because they also used it to make drugs for a clinical trial that wasn’t supposed to happen. This is where they made the pills that ruined my life, Clarke!”

Josephine fishes in her pocket and produces a blister pack. “While I was waiting for you to wake up, I actually found these in here! They must be the very last pills produced.” She drops them and although Clarke can’t see from this angle, she sees Josephine twisting her boot, and knows she’s crushing them.

Clarke finally finds the source of the whirring sound. There’s another conveyer belt some distance away, at the same level as the one she’s hanging from. Except this one is moving, whirring as it goes.

And then she hears Finn’s voice. Or some approximation of it, really. He sounds like he’s gagged.

“Where is he?” Clarke struggles against her restraints. “Where’s Finn?”

“Why do we have to talk about _your_ soulmate all the time?” Josephine says in a bored voice. “We’ll get to him in a minute. Let’s talk about _mine_. Gabriel is much hotter than Finn. Sorry, not sorry.”

Clarke cranes her neck. There’s too much machinery obscuring her vision of the moving conveyer, but she can see where it leads to, and she realizes the whirring was not coming from the conveyer at all.

It’s from a saw at the end of the conveyer. A gigantic, circular metal saw. It looks like the skeleton of a machine that was taken apart—the safety measures and bulk stripped to reveal the working parts.

Josephine notices her gaze. “Oh! Yeah, I spent days getting that ready. They used to use that to cut sheets of metal into pieces. I like to think I found a cooler use for it.”

At that moment, Finn appears from behind the tank obscuring Clarke’s vision. He’s handcuffed up to the conveyer, same as her, and sure enough, gagged. His conveyer is moving at a snail’s pace, but steady. Towards the saw. He’s struggling, face bloodied, and meets her eyes.

Josephine keeps going over Clarke’s silent horror. “Anyway, where was I? Oh! Gabriel. I love him, but he just never understood we were meant to be together forever. We have a bond. I know he feels it too, but it’s not strong enough for him to leave his family and be with me. If I still had my soulmark, he would. He’d leave everything to be with me.” She leans over Clarke. “Your mother took that from me. My _soulmate_. Do you have any idea what that does to a person?”

“Yes, Josephine, I _do_ ,” Clarke says, desperate as she watches Finn’s conveyor creep ever closer to the saw. “I lost my soulmate, too. He died. I understand what you’re feeling, just—”

“Your _first_ soulmate,” Josephine drawls. She fishes a ring out of her pocket, begins playing with it. Clarke recognizes its diamonds—it’s the engagement ring Finn gave her. “You know, he wasn’t even supposed to die that night, but now I’m glad.”

Clarke stares. “You… you were part of it?”

Josephine scoffs. “Course I was part of it. We were a whole group back then. But I was too young to be part of the ground team, so I got to be the girl on comms.”

Clarke dimly remembers that Shumway and the others had all had earpieces.

“We were gonna kill Jake Griffin in front of Abby, see how she liked it. Except he was misbehaving so we had to kill him first. That was all a mess, thanks to you by the way. You killed all my friends. But whatever. We got Abby Griffin’s soulmate, so I guess we basically did what we came to do.”

“Then why are you still doing this?”

“I’m not done yet. Well, your mom got _another_ soulmate and that just ticked me off.” Josephine’s smile slides away. “You rich people get everything, don’t you? I suppose I could’ve killed that Kane guy, but she got put away in prison. And if I was gonna kill a soulmate, I had to do it in front of her. So I thought about waiting until she was out of prison. But then _you_ came along! And from snooping around at Polaris, I found out you restarted the soulmarks research. Bad move, by the way. Very bad.”

Clarke can’t speak for a second. _That’s_ what this is about? “We didn’t restart any clinical trials. We were doing everything by the book—”

“That’s what your mom said, too. You just never learn, do you?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “I knew the whole second soulmark thing is genetic. I bet you’d have one too, but you didn’t show one for a while, and so I had to follow you around until I found it! And got my best photo of it. It was so easy to just share it with TMZ, and bam! Next thing you know, I find out your soulmate is _Finn Collins_.” She calls across the room. “I loved you in _Spacewalker_ , by the way. Maybe before you get chopped into pieces I can get your autograph?”

Finn screams into his gag. Clarke feels a bead of sweat trickle down her face. “Josephine, don’t do this.”

“I actually wasn’t planning to make this big a production about it, honestly. I just wanted to slip in and kill him in whatever opening your bodyguards gave me. That tall bodyguard of yours, he was way too sharp. I couldn’t get at you two during your vacation that summer.”

Roan.

“And Bellamy Blake chased me for like, four hours straight when I tried to get at you and Finn during that gala last year. I’ll be honest, I almost thought I was a goner that time.”

“Josephine,” Clarke repeats, barely listening now. “Please, let Finn go, I’ll stop the soulmarks research, I’ll stop everything—”

“Of course you will,” Josephine replies with a grin. “You can’t really do much research when you’re dead. Well? I think that’s everything. What do you think of my revenge plan?”

“You’re a sociopath,” is what Clarke manages to say.

Josephine scoffs. “Judgy. Like you’re one to talk, anyway. You’re the only person in this room who’s killed people. So far, anyway.” Josephine stills suddenly, eyes narrowing. “Did you hear that?”

Clarke hadn’t heard anything; she was too busy listening to the whir of the saw, and Finn’s muffled screams. He’s only yards away now from the saw.

Josephine moves behind Clarke and then there’s the crank of a lever. With a jolt, Clarke’s conveyer starts to move, at a faster speed than Finn’s was. Josephine hits another button, and another whirring sound joins the first. Directly ahead, another saw Clarke hadn’t initially noticed begins to whir. She’s helplessly pulled along with the conveyer, even though she drags her feet.

“N—no, no no— _wait—_ ”

Josephine pats her shoulder. “I’m going to check out that noise. In the meantime, I think Finn’s head is almost at the saw! He’s going to get a little haircut before he dies. I always thought his hair was too long in the movies anyway, didn’t you? God, those stylists really don’t know what they’re doing.”

And she leaves Clarke’s side, ignoring her pleas.

—

Bellamy didn’t know what he expected when he tracked Clarke, but it certainly wasn’t this.

It’s an old, nondescript factory building on the edge of town, surrounded by warehouses. He drives around the perimeter once or twice, keeping his eyes peeled for people. But not a soul. There’s just a black van parked nearby.

He loads his gun in the car. Makes sure his knife is still in the thigh pocket, because that thing’s saved him more than once. Then he takes a deep breath and gets out.

There’s no one in the van, nothing except a smear of blood on the driver’s side handle. He stops inspecting the vehicle when he hears a faint whirring sound that is coming from the building itself.

Getting into the building isn’t easy. The door is small and rusted shut, and he creeps around looking for the one Clarke must’ve come in through. When he finds it, it’s chained closed. He’d have better luck with breaking through the rusted door, but the sound it would make is awful. But to get through steel chains… He doesn’t have equipment. He’d have to leave and come back.

And no way in hell is he doing that.

So he breaks through the rusted door. WInces at the screeching sound it makes. He falls into a dark space, nearly banging his knee against something metal. A hammer. He picks it up. An acetylene torch. He stuffs that in his jacket pocket, too, because what the hell. The whole room smells like rot and rust and decay. There’s a hallway, and a stream of light coming from inside a lit room. Voices talking. But he knows he’s made the right decision when he hears the faint whirring rise in volume, high pitched from that direction.

It sounds like a saw.

Then, Clarke’s voice: _screaming_. “Wait, wait!”

He moves automatically, stops thinking about anything else. He just goes towards the doorway, gun trained in front of him, following Clarke’s voice.

A bullet ricochets off metal near his shoulder, and he jerks back.

Josephine is standing at the other end of the hallway behind him. She snarls at him when he turns and instantly fires back, but she’s ducked away. He hears her call, “Clarke, you’re not gonna believe who I just saw! Bellamy Blake!”

Clarke makes a choked sound. Bellamy creeps around the corner of the doorway. To the factory floor. He focuses in on Clarke, where she’s tied by the hands to a conveyer, being dragged forward. His eyes follow the path of the conveyer. It confirms his worst suspicions. A fucking _saw_.

“Bellamy, stop Finn!” Clarke screams, and that makes no sense to him at all until he realizes that Finn’s hanging from a separate conveyer, mere yards away from the saw. He barely catches a glimpse before another bullet ricochets off the doorway. He ducks back into the shadows.

Josephine tuts, now sounding far less amused. “I understand why you fired him now, Clarke. I mean, yes, he’s eye candy, but he’s so _annoying_.”

Bellamy takes a deep breath and sprints out from behind the doorway again.

Instantly, gunshots again. A bullet whistles past his ear. He hears Clarke scream something again, and then a thud, and the gunshots abruptly cut out. He throws himself behind a tank, rolling back to his feet. He looks up only to find himself very close to Finn, who’s about to get the haircut of his life.

“I should’ve tied your legs,” Josephine growls, and he realizes he has Clarke to thank for not getting turned into Swiss cheese right there. “But whatever. Kick all you want now, it doesn’t matter.” Her footsteps start to draw closer. Towards him.

He looks behind him, at the flammable warning on the tank.

Josephine comes closer. He doesn’t know how he’s going to free Clarke or Finn with her stalking his every move.

“Josephine,” he hears Clarke say calmly. “You know, I talked to Gabriel.”

Josephine’s footsteps pause. For the first time, she sounds a little uncertain. “What?”

Bellamy sticks to the side of the tank and moves as quietly as he can. Meanwhile, Clarke says, “I went to his house and asked him about you.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not. He said he met you in high school. He said you threatened his girlfriend. That’s why he got a restraining order.”

“Gabriel and I like to play games,” Josephine says, sounding a little irked now. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“You know what else he said?” Clarke goes on. “He said even if you still had the prime symbol on your wrist he’d never be with you.”

That’s a lie, of course, but it seems to touch a nerve. “I’m starting to think I should’ve gagged you,” Josephine snaps, and Bellamy makes his move.

He lunges out from behind the tank, up to Finn, and bashes his handcuffs with the hammer as hard as he can.

He’s fairly sure he breaks Finn’s hand, too. But the point is, it’s done. Finn lurches down from the conveyer, but stumbles forward.

Instinctively, Bellamy throws his gun down and grabs a fistful of his shirt and pulls him back, just in time. Finn’s nose is a hair’s breadth away from the saw.

Josephine finally catches up, firing at him. Yet another bullet whistles by his ear. “Not so fast, Bellamy!”

He turns and shoots. This time his aim isn’t completely off; he hears Josephine’s scream of pain, her arm jerking back. He fires again, but she’s ducked behind the tank.

Bellamy grabs Finn by the shoulders and pulls him up. “Get out of here.”

“Clarke—I’m not leaving her with Josephine—”

“I’ll take care of Clarke,” he seethes. “You call the police. Eligius. Somebody. Or we’re all dead.”

He pushes Finn towards the door, and he goes, limping. Then he turns around to see Josephine in view again, her gun trained on him with her uninjured arm.

“Bellamy… you’re really upsetting my plans.”

Bellamy glances down. His gun’s on the floor at his feet. If he could just…

“Don’t even think about it,” Josephine says. Panting. “See that pair of handcuffs on your left side?”

Bellamy sees them. An extra pair.

“Handcuff yourself to the conveyer,” Josephine instructs him.

Clarke speaks up. “Don’t, Josephine.”

“Why not?” Josephine’s breathing hard. “You know, you two are _both_ so annoying, I’m starting to wonder why you’re not soulm—”

The tank next to her explodes.

Bellamy’s blown back by the impact of it, falling to the ground on his hands and knees. Ringing in his ears. He turns his head and allows himself a single grin at the fiery leftovers of Josephine Lightbourne.

Thank god for that torch. It’s been a long time since high school chemistry, but he remembered some things. Apply heat. Gas expands, pressure builds… things go boom.

Except the problem, as he notices now, is that the tank and Josephine are not the only things that have been obliterated. They were too close to the structural beams. Fire is spreading fast. The wall makes an awful crunching sound, and he looks up to see the roof— _shift_.

He staggers to his feet and runs to Clarke. She’s now yards away from her own saw, sweaty, chained, blood running from her nose. He looks up at her wrists. The chains on her are much heavier than the ones on Finn, and he gets in front of her, between her and the saw, and hits at them with his hammer as he walks backwards, their chests nearly bumping into each other.

He tunes into what she’s saying. “Leave, Bellamy. Leave.”

“Shut up, Clarke.” Heat flares near them from another bloom of fire.

“This building’s going to collapse.”

He looks up. A terrifying shrieking sound is coming from the beams that hold this place up. He looks back at Clarke’s chains. “On both of us, I guess. Because you’re out of your mind if you think I’m leaving you here alone.”

A pause. Then: “You can’t get through these chains. Stop the conveyor instead.”

Of course. He runs towards the control panel, but the lever’s _broken off_.

“Did you find it?” Clarke calls. She sounds strangely calm for someone who’s a foot away from getting sliced in half.

His eyes follow the levers and pulleys of the machine, which normally wouldn’t be seen, but it appears this machine’s been stripped down to its basic functions. Sweat drips down his brow. It’s intricate.

He throws his hammer into the machine with unerring aim.

It gets stuck in the pulley wheels. The conveyer grinds to a halt. He breathes a sigh of relief, but then it starts again. A slow jerk forward. Stops again. The hammer falls in place slightly. The conveyer jolts again forward. It has only bought precious seconds.

He abandons it, and sprints back to Clarke. Fuck it. If he were Clarke, then maybe he could find some better way to save her. But he can’t. All he can do is put his body between her and that saw.

Then the building falls on top of them and it doesn’t matter anyway.

—

The one thing that is nice, he thinks when he comes to in the dark, buried alive, is that the saw is broken. Before something had struck his head and he’d blacked out, he’d seen a falling concrete beam crush it to dust, inches away from Clarke’s face.

His head hurts. He’s lying on his stomach, and it’s completely dark. He tries to push himself up, but can’t rise more than a few inches before his back hits something hard and metal. He collapses back to the wreckage and cranes his head up. He tries to shift backwards, but he can hardly move. His leg is stuck under a beam. Not crushed, just ensnared below the knee so he can’t quite pull it out. He stretches his arms forward and his fingers graze more metal. He’s well and truly caged in.

There’s a clinking of chains beside him. He turns his head, eyes slowly adjusting to the dark.

Clarke’s on her stomach next to him, shaking broken chains off her wrists. He instantly reaches for her, touches her back.

“You okay?”

She coughs weakly. “I feel like a building fell on me.”

He has to smile. She smiles back, trying to shift her position, but it doesn’t look like she has much room either. They’re surrounded by debris on all sides, only stopped from being crushed by the long slab of metal that hangs suspended just over them.

He reaches to help her, but gets stuck again by his damn leg.

She notices. “Oh, no.”

“It’s not hurting me,” he reassures her. She doesn’t seem reassured at all. She covers her face with her hands for a second. When she removes them, the expression on her face is resolute.

“Bellamy, we have to get out of here.”

She scoots forward a bit, starts shifting debris, raking at it with her fingers, as if she might dig them out of a mountain all by herself. Bellamy knows better, especially when he pulls out his phone and finds he has no service. Concrete all around them. There’s no light. Sound is deadened. It’s sweltering here.

He tosses his phone to the side. He won’t voice any of these observations, of course. She probably has noticed them herself. She just refuses to accept it.

“You shouldn’t have been here,” she says. “Why were you here?”

“I put a tracker in your shoe.”

She’s silent. “Like Finn.” He nods, and she adds, “Thank you for saving him.”

He doesn’t say anything for a second. “I didn’t save him for _him_.”

“I know. Still.”

“I wouldn’t have saved him at all if I were closer to you,” he goes on, because he might as well confess it all now. “I would’ve let him die. Gladly. And you could hate me for the rest of your life but at least you’d be alive to do it. You wanna know why?”

“Bellamy. Don’t.”

“Why?” he says, angry that they’re here, angry that he’s had to pretend he doesn’t feel this way, angry that she _still_ wants him to pretend even now. “Why shouldn’t I say it? As if you don’t already know the truth?”

“Of course I know it.” Her voice is perfectly steady. “But there’s no point in saying it, unless you plan on dying. Which we are not doing.”

Her voice becomes thin at the end there. And Bellamy sighs, because she’s still determined to think they’re going to dig themselves out. He listens to her try to move some metal out of the way and then joins in. Only for her. Only for the slim chance she might survive.

They do that without speaking for what seems like hours. But for every beam they manage to shift together, there’s another. There’s more debris, and sometimes when they move something, even more rains on their heads.

They shrink away when another beam falls from the sky. Clarke grabs his jacket sleeve and jerks his arm away, him towards her, and a sharp piece of metal lands where his hand was with a _thunk_.

They have to stop doing this, he thinks. Or they’ll just die even faster. They both lie there, tangled up, breathing hard.

“Is it just me,” Clarke gasps, “or is it getting harder to catch my breath?”

It’s not just her. He feels like he’s running a marathon even though he’s barely moving. Their eyes connect in the dark, and he knows she’s thinking the same thing he is. There must be no air circulation in here. They are using up a limited amount of oxygen. This is a tomb.

Clarke turns back on her stomach and cranes her head up, undoubtedly searching for a spot in the ceiling that can be poked at. She says, “I’m sorry I sent those applications.”

It takes Bellamy a second to remember what she’s talking about. It feels like forever ago. “It’s alright.”

“No, it’s not.” Her voice is fierce. “You were right. I won’t apologize for arguing with you about it, but it was wrong to go behind your back. I’m sorry.”

Bellamy chuckles despite himself. “What were you gonna do if they were all rejections? Just have them mailed to my door anyway, a nice big fuck you?”

She sputters on a laugh. “I knew they wouldn’t be. Your old applications were good.”

“I dunno, Clarke. Hell of a gamble.”

They laugh softly in the dark. The air is thinning, so it might be using too much of their precious little oxygen, but it’s never a waste to laugh. Not with her.

“I just wanted you to live,” she says wistfully, when their laughter fades. “I just really wanted you to live.”

Her words make him ache inside. “You made me _want_ to live.”

And it’s true. She had inspired that in him. She had made him see a better version of himself, made him want to strive to become that person she thought he was. She made him dream and yearn for more out of life than what he was allotted by fate. He’d thought a long time ago that he hated that, but no. He loves that she did that.

“I think it’s raining,” Clarke whispers. He strains his ears and can faintly hear it, too. It must be going pretty hard for them to hear under all this.

Clarke seems to have the opposite thought process. “We can’t be far from the surface if we hear it,” she murmurs.

She tries again to lift a slab of concrete. He knows she won’t be able to. But that’s just the kind of person she is. She always tries, for him. Even when anyone else would have given up on him she tries. In everything she does, she tries, she tries, she tries so hard. And he loves that about her.

He watches her back rise and fall with shallow breaths, and thinks about what he’s going to miss about existing in this world.

His mother, yes. Octavia, yes. But Clarke. His thoughts always return to her; his greatest happiness and his greatest regret. He is going to miss her. The way she is different from anyone else he’s ever met, somehow both ruthless and kind. Sometimes, to him, she is ruthlessly kind. She makes him feel things and want things and to _be_ things that he’s not.

Maybe he didn’t get to go to college, or buy shiny new expensive things, but he did have at least one thing, one luxury he kept close his whole life, and cherished, and guarded jealously for himself. Even when it was selfish of him to do so. His friendship with Clarke Griffin was the one thing he could never quite bring himself to give up. “Clarke, remember when we talked about having a fund for sunny days?”

She stops scraping away at metal. “I’m sorry you never got to have one.”

“But I did.” He waits until he can feel her looking at him. “The sunny day fund was you. Always you.”

She starts to cry.

Not the reaction he was hoping for. “Never mi—”

“I need to tell you something. Josephine got it wrong,” she says through hiccupped breaths. “Finn was on that conveyer and I was scared for him. Of course I was, but I just kept thinking how glad I was that it wasn’t you.” He’s silent, and she goes on. “I’ve thought about what would happen if Finn died. I know I would feel guilty for the rest of my life. But if it was you... I have no idea. I don’t even want to think about what I’d do in a world without you in it.”

Every word hits him, deeply.

She wipes her tears in a rather frustrated gesture. “We wasted time, Bellamy. We wasted so much time.” She bangs her fists on the metal in front of her. More dust and debris scatters.

“It wasn’t a waste,” Bellamy tells her quietly, because he can feel that she’s lost hope, and he doesn’t want her to die thinking that.

But Clarke isn’t looking at him. She’s now sorting through the debris she’s scattered. Her lips part. “Bellamy, look. You won’t believe what I found.”

He squints down at her hand, and it takes him a moment to identify what she’s holding. It’s a blister pack, mostly pulverized.

She tilts it towards him, and he realizes there’s one pill left in it which was not crushed.

Clarke’s voice is a whisper. “This is the pill that took Josephine’s soulmark away.”

He looks into Clarke’s feverish blue eyes and nods.

She fumbles with the package with shaking hands, puncturing the last blister, and the pill rolls into her open palm.

They both stare at it. There’s a groove in the centre, and he plucks it up and carefully, ever so carefully, cracks it in half. “Will it work like this?” he asks her.

“I don’t know. The one they gave the participants was probably stronger than they needed, just to make sure there was an effect significant enough to put in the study.”

He’s silent for a moment. “If it works... they’ll be gone.”

“They’ll never really be gone.”

He nods and drops one half of the pill into Clarke’s waiting palm. In unison, they lift the pills to their mouths. And pause. This is an action that cannot be reversed. It’s crazy. It’s dangerous. It’s—

Exactly what he’s always wanted.

“Together?” Clarke whispers.

“Together.”

In unison, they swallow their halves of the pill. It goes with some difficulty down his parched throat.

They lie there in silence for a while. He doesn’t feel very different for a long time, except maybe more lightheaded as their slow suffocation continues. Eventually, though, there’s a burning in his right wrist. Clarke winces a little beside him, and he knows she feels it too.

They turn on their sides, facing each other, and put their hands together, watching the tattoos fade.

When they’re gone, or at least faded enough that they can’t be seen anymore in the dark, their hands interlace. The air is too thin to speak anymore, only to struggle for breath, to keep their eyes open, locked on each other. And eventually even then, Clarke’s eyes start to slide shut before his do.

But he takes comfort in one thing in these last few minutes. They’re finally untethered. Not promised to anyone, not obliged by fate.

Under the rubble, in this little world between them, they finally get to live on a planet without soulmarks.

—

Clarke wakes to a rush of air and glaring light.

Cold. Cold, biting air. Wet. The pattering of rain, thunder. Voices. Light exploding against her closed eyelids. Hands taking her arms, pulling at her body.

She cries out in pain, then marvels that she has the breath to cry from pain. “One survivor here!” she hears someone shout. Clarke opens her eyes. A woman in a firefighter’s uniform. The rubble has been parted. Clarke looks behind her. Bellamy’s eyes are still closed. She starts to fight her rescuer, trying to crawl back to him.

“No, Bellamy, Bellamy, please, Bellamy—”

His back rises as if with breath. Clarke could cry. Her rescuer seems to notice it too, because she yells, “Possibly two survivors! I need some help down here!”

Clarke crawls away from her rescuer, grabs Bellamy’s wrists. His blank wrists, just as blank as her own. She’s about to tug on them before she remembers his leg is stuck under there and they’ll probably have to lift more rubble to get him out. She settles for shaking him. “Bellamy, get up. Open your eyes for me.”

And he does. Beautiful, brown, long-lashed eyes flutter open and focus on her. He mouths her name. _Clarke_?

She falls to her knees beside him. “Bellamy, we’re alive.” She tosses her head back, to look up at the sky they’ve been unearthed to greet. Water pours down in sheets, but she’s never been so happy to see a rainy day. “We’re _alive_.”

—

They’re brought to the hospital emergency room to get checked out, and Clarke insists her bed is the bay next to Bellamy’s. They draw back the curtain between them, so they can see each other.

Jaha is her first visitor. He nods at Bellamy and then looks at Clarke. “I came as soon as I heard. Kane’s on his way.”

“Thank you.” Clarke hides her blank wrists under her blanket. She doesn’t know how Jaha would react if he saw that she’d wiped his son’s mark from her wrist.

“I have some… unfortunate news,” Jaha says eventually. Clarke’s head comes up. “There was a fire in Polaris laboratories yesterday.”

A pit settles in Clarke’s gut. Dread. “And the soulmarks research?”

He meets her eyes steadily. “Wiped out.”

Clarke settles back on her gurney with a defeated sigh. “Josephine.” Screwing everything up even now, even though she’s dead. Her remains had been found and they were not pretty. There’ll be police questioning about that, too. Clarke’s overwhelmed by a wave of tiredness.

She doesn’t get to think about it much more, though, because then the curtain’s drawn back again, and there’s Finn.

“Clarke.” He comes immediately to her bedside to hug her. His hand is in a brace. She hugs him back, a little emptier, and meets Bellamy’s eyes over his shoulder.

Real life has come rushing back in.

Bellamy looks away. She wishes she knew what he was thinking.

A nurse walks in as Finn pulls away. “Mr. Blake, it’s time for your leg X-Ray.”

As Bellamy’s wheeled away, Finn sits down on the edge of her bed. “I was so scared,” he says, and fills her in on what had happened on his end.

He had called for help, then saw the building go down. He’d tried fruitlessly to dig them out before emergency services arrived to help. It had taken hours.

The team that had been sent to Clarke’s old mansion were brought here to help. Hope had waned. But they soldiered on, and finally unearthed them just in the nick of time.

“You looked like you were dead,” Finn breathes, and before she can put her arms beneath the blanket again, he grabs her hand. Looks down at it. Freezes.

Her right wrist, just like her left one, is completely blank.

“Finn—” she says, because he’s gone pale.

“Did Josephine do this? I saw her with those pills…”

Clarke wonders if he’d believe her if she said yes. In any case, he seems to read the truth on her face.

He stands, letting go of her hand like it’s burned him. “What did you do?”

“I—” She has no explanation for him. Under the harsh hospital lights, under his accusing gaze, knowing people are listening, she doesn’t know what to say. It had made perfect sense when the world was only Bellamy and her.

“You erased your soulmark? On purpose?” Finn says, and conversation quiets down around them. She closes her eyes.

“Finn, don’t do this here.”

“Why, because you don’t want a _scene_?”

She opens her eyes again. “Because I almost died,” she snaps. “And you could at least give me twenty-four hours before interrogating me about what I did or didn’t do when I thought my life was over.”

Finn’s face flickers, and he stands abruptly. “I’ll get you something to eat.” Without waiting for a response, he’s gone.

—

Later, she’s discharged from hospital, has finished being questioned by the police, and gets to go home, where she has even more visitors.

She wants to be left alone. She wants to think about what she’s going to say to Bellamy. In between visitors, she turns on the TV to a celebrity TV channel.

And there—they’re already talking about her erased soulmarks. Word gets out fast. Especially after Finn had made a scene in the hospital about it. She sets the remote down and leans in to catch what’s being said. LOVE EXPERT BREAKS DOWN CLARKE AND BELLAMY, reads the headline.

“So Clarke Griffin erased her soulmark _herself_ , if the rumours are to be believed,” one reporter says. “To be with Bellamy Blake. What does this mean?”

“It means she’s made a stupid choice,” the love expert replies.

They bring up a huge old picture of her and Bellamy walking down the street together, and point at Bellamy’s expression. “He’s annoyed with her.” He’s just not smiling. They point to Clarke. “She looks like she’s going to cry.” They turn back to the viewers. “There’s plenty of instances we could talk about that show Clarke and Bellamy aren’t a good match for each other. I mean, it was just a year ago that Clarke infamously tried to get a restraining order against him, and now she’s turning down Finn Collins for him? They’re volatile, is what they are.”

The expert looks at the camera and it feels like they’re looking directly at her.

“Clarke has a soulmate, no matter the fact that she erased her mark from her wrist. The relationship has already failed. It’s just a question of when they realize it.”

She turns the TV off and rubs her face. She’d thought a brush with death would erase all doubts, but it doesn’t, and that drives her crazy. She just keeps thinking it: Their whole lives it’s like fate just shoves different people in front of them instead the obvious—each other. That has to mean something. Maybe there’s still something about them they’re not seeing.

“Miss Griffin,” the butler says from the doorway. “Visitors to see you.”

“Finn,” she says grimly.

“No. A Monty Green and Jasper Jordan.”

—

“What are you doing here?” she asks, shocked, when the butler brings them in.

“You almost died, the least we could do was show up,” Monty says. “You’d never guess how much I sold your dad’s autographed movie for on eBay, by the way.”

“And,” Jasper adds, “we just wanted to see whether it was true.”

“Whether what was—” she sighs, noticing how their eyes have strayed to her arms, fully covered by a long-sleeve shirt.

Monty and Jasper lean over as she rolls up her sleeves. “They’re really gone?” Jasper asks. “Not makeup?”

“No makeup. They’re really gone.”

“ _Whoaaa_ ,” Monty and Jasper say in unison.

They catch up for a bit, and then Jasper asks if she’s got any more of her dad’s autographed things lying around. She rolls her eyes and asks the butler to take him to the old stash.

In the meantime, Monty asks, “So, what are you gonna do now that you got rid of your soulmarks?”

She knows what he means. Her mind turns back to that celebrity love expert. “I don’t know, Monty. I got rid of it, but I can’t pretend it never existed.”

Monty’s silent for a second before standing. “Clarke, can I show you something?”

Puzzled, she nods. He leads her to the bathroom, to the sink. As she watches, he turns on the tap and pulls his sleeve up his arm, revealing his shovel soulmark.

“Monty, what—”

He puts his wrist under the spray. She gawks. He scrubs it for a while, and black smudges come away on his fingers.

Her jaw drops the more he reveals it. The more dark water flows into the sink, the more he scrubs. Finally, Monty slowly turns his wrist towards her. “It’s funny what you can do with a little black marker.”

His soulmark is a rake, just like Jasper’s. She’s shocked she’d never realized this before—she’d always known their soulmarks looked similar, but now it’s exceedingly obvious Monty had only filled in the tines of the rake to make it look like a shovel.

At her stunned silence, Monty goes on. “Jasper and I grew up soulmates. But then Jasper met Maya and fell in love with her. Like, _insanely_ in love with her.” Affectionate eye roll. “And at the end of high school, before we moved away from the farm for university, he told me he wanted to marry her someday. So we pretend we’re not soulmates. Because no one would understand.” He offers her a wry smile. “But ever since you told us about Wells… I thought maybe you would.”

Something clicks inside of her, some final piece of the puzzle that was Clarke and Wells. “But you still love him,” she says slowly.

“Oh, yeah. Big time. When I was little I thought I’d marry him, at least until he met Maya and I met Harper. But that doesn’t make me love him less. He still gets me better than anyone else in the world. He’s still my best and oldest friend.” He pauses. Clarke remembers how, long ago, Jasper had so quickly pulled up an article about soulmarks from the internet, the exact thing she wanted to read. Almost too quickly. As if they’d had their own long search for answers. As if maybe Clarke had never been alone, as if maybe nothing had ever been wrong with her at all. Monty goes on.

“Listen, Clarke… I think soulmates are the universe’s way of guiding us to people it thinks can understand us, or understand a part of us. But what we decide to do with that is up to us, not fate.”

—

After Monty and Jasper leave, Finn shows up with a bouquet of flowers, but Clarke’s ready with what she’s got to say.

“I’m not marrying you, Finn. Not now, not ever.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” He sets the flowers down on a table in the hallway and takes her hands. “But I’ve thought about it. And I don’t care if your soulmark is gone. I still love you. You’re still my soulmate and we both know it.”

“My answer is still no.”

“I’m your _soulmate,_ Clarke. I’m the love of your life.” He holds up his wrist, his clock face tattoo. “You can erase your soulmark, but you can't deny fate.”

She’d thought about that. Logic and love have warred in her head her whole life, but now she knows which one she can live without. “We’re soulmates in theory. But it doesn’t feel like it, Finn. Maybe in another life. I may have been able to accept it if it weren’t for—”

“Bellamy?” At her silence, he shakes his head. “It’s not about Wells at all. It’s always about Bellamy.”

She thinks about denying it but doesn’t. Because he’s not wrong.

On paper, she and Finn are good together. They were both born and raised in similar social circumstances, raised under the watchful gaze of tabloids and cameras. On that level alone, they understand each others’ lives very well. Clarke often had thought she would be the perfect soulmate for Finn if her life had gone the way it was meant to.

But Clarke is not the person the universe probably meant for her to be. And a large part of that is because she met Bellamy.

Finn seems to take her silence as encouragement. “Listen, Clarke. Even if I didn’t have this mark on my wrist I’d fall for you.”

“Are you sure that’s true?”

“You know I liked you before I knew we were soulmates.”

That’s true, but… “Would you have asked me to marry you so soon if the universe didn’t give you a sign it was the right thing to do?”

Finn throws his hands up. “That’s the _point_ of soulmarks, Clarke! It’s so you can be glad you made the right choice. There’s no one out there as perfect for me as you. I’m in love with you, Clarke. I can’t help it. You’re not being fair. You’re leaving me without a soulmate.”

It’s a guilt she’s considered a thousand times. But she doesn’t let it stop her now. She arches a brow. “I’m sure Raven would be happy to take you back.”

“Raven’s with Luna now.”

Clarke hadn’t known that. She supposes some soulmates really do work out. She shakes her head and stands up. Finn stares at her.

“Where are you going? You can’t just _leave_.”

“You know, Finn, you don’t have to do what the universe tells you to do all the time.” She turns away and picks up her purse. “You’re the one always telling me to be a rebel.”

—

She finds herself at Arkadia headquarters, at the research lab. It’s been more or less cleaned out after the fire Josephine set. It’s now just an empty, stripped room that still smells like smoke.

Thelonious Jaha finds her there once again, where she’d asked him to meet. He stands next to her, gazing with her at the destruction.

“Years of work, gone,” Clarke says finally. “It’s such a waste.”

“Still looking for answers, Clarke?”

Clarke sighs and turns to look at him. “I’m sure you’ve heard that I got rid of my soulmarks. I just… wanted to talk to you. Apologize, I guess. But I also want you to know that it doesn’t mean I love Wells any less.”

She braces herself. But Jaha surprises her. “I know, Clarke. I think we put too much stock in soulmarks.”

Clarke gets the feeling he’s talking about more than Wells. She has always had the feeling he’d seen through her.

“It’s hard not to,” she replies.

“It’s a romantic idea, that love is fated, that you can’t help who you fall for,” Jaha agrees. “There’s truth to that, perhaps. But falling in love is easy. _Staying_ in love is a choice. And I’ve always suspected soulmarks are a self-fulfilling prophecy that way.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that when things get tough, it’s easy to have faith in the marks on your wrist. But if they’re not there, you have to have faith in each other instead. And having faith in something intangible, in something nobody has given you, but something you have given _yourself…_ that is exquisitely difficult.”

Clarke blinks back tears. “If it’s so hard, then is it worth it?” she whispers.

“I think that’s up to you, Clarke.” Jaha turns away from the now empty lab space. “But I know what my son would say.”

—

Bellamy gets a phone call from Eligius the next day. They want to speak with him, they say. A meeting tonight, arranged in a hurry.

He heavily suspects he’s about to go through an inquiry about his actions last night.

In the meantime, he doesn’t turn on the news, doesn’t try to check any celebrity sites. He’s not sure he wants to know what Clarke is up to. Promises made in the dark before they died don’t carry as much weight in real life.

Bellamy winds up at his mother’s apartment in the hours before the inquiry. She hugs him at the door, cries into his shoulder.

“I’m okay, Mom.”

She doesn’t seem reassured. She clings to him, more emotional than usual. He frowns and pulls away. Glances around the apartment. It’s messy.

“You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

“No,” his mother says at once.

He starts opening cupboards while she stands back.

“Bellamy, I haven’t.”

“Alright,” he says, but keeps looking. She trails after him as he heads to the bedroom next. He’s about to look under the bed when he realizes the throw rug she’s got on the floor is shifted out of place.

He narrows his eyes. Aurora tenses in his peripheral vision.

He snatches the edge of the rug and pulls.

And there—there’s a loose floorboard.

“Bellamy,” Aurora begins, but he reaches down and tugs. How long has this been here? Their entire goddamn lives?

His mother’s trying to pull him away, but he’s stronger, he shakes her off and reaches under the floor to pull out a wooden chest. It’s got some weight to it, and is the length of his arm. He sets it on the floor, but it’s got a heavy lock on it. He tugs on it. Doesn’t budge.

Bellamy wheels on his mother. “Open it.”

“Why do you have to be like this?”

“I said open it.”

“It’s not what you think. Just trust me.”

Yeah, right. “Open it right now or I’m taking a saw to the damn lock.”

“Oh, you’re just like your father,” she seethes. “Never could leave well enough alone.”

“I’m _not_ my father!” he shouts, and she shrinks back, but he doesn’t care. “He’s the one who left you. But no matter what you’ve done, _I never have_.”

Aurora’s mouth opens and closes several times. But he’s not done. He goes on, voice lower.

“The reason I do this is because I care. Because I don’t want to find you overdosed on the bathroom floor ever again. Once was enough.”

His voice breaks, despite his anger. He’s never forgetting that day.

Her eyes become shiny, and he once again has the impression she’s not truly looking at him. Then she surprises him.

She turns and bends down beside the box. He watches her put in the combination. 1-0-0. It clicks, and she slowly opens the lid. Bellamy peers over her shoulder.

There’s no bottles inside, but a series of random knick knacks that, at first, mean nothing to Bellamy. A collared maroon men’s shirt. A small container of cologne so old the logo has rubbed off the glass. A thin, gold chain necklace. A cheap looking watch that has long since stopped ticking.

Bellamy realizes with a jolt these must be his father’s things.

There’s a book on top of it all. Aurora picks it up. Bellamy focuses on the title. _Bakunawa Eats the Moon_ , it’s titled, a children’s book, with an illustrated dragon on the cover.

“Your father used to tell me stories,” Aurora says softly. “When he left, I went to the library and looked for any Filipino mythology books they had. This was the only one. I take it out every now and then, over the years… Even though it doesn’t tell the story quite as well as he did.” She smiles a bit. “It’s two months overdue. Again. Maybe you could return it for me?”

Bellamy stares down at the objects, then the book. He slowly sinks down on the bed with her. She hands him the book, and he slowly flips through it. A piece of his identity he didn’t know he was missing quietly slides into place.

As he’s reading, Aurora says, “I—I’m going to join a support group.”

He looks up sharply. She’s gazing at him.

“I want to be better for you,” she whispers. Puts her hand on his face. “My beautiful, brave boy. There’s something I have to tell you. Your father didn’t abandon us.”

It’s so out of left field that Bellamy can only stare at her in shock. “What?”

“It was a lie, that part. The rest of it was real. We _did_ have horrible arguments all the time. There was a particularly bad one the night I last saw him. I wanted him gone, because he wasn’t my soulmate and I thought, this couldn’t possibly work. There was no point in trying. Maybe I was right, but that doesn’t change the fact that I still think about him twenty-seven years later.”

Bellamy’s speechless. His mother smiles a little, pats his cheek. Then she turns away to look out the window.

“So to answer your question from years ago, no, I don’t regret meeting your father, Bellamy. I regret telling him to leave.”

—

The problem, Clarke realizes, is that she has no way to reach Bellamy. Both their cell phones had gone missing yesterday in the chaos. Clarke hasn’t had a chance to get a new one and she’d bet it’s not Bellamy’s first priority either.

She has a sneaking suspicion that he would’ve seen his mother today, though. So she calls Aurora, and finds her suspicions were correct. Aurora tells her Bellamy went to the library to return a book for her, the same library he had used often as a child. So she dons a pair of sunglasses and a cap and takes her BMW. She gives her bodyguards the day off. With Josephine gone, she’s already thinking she can let up on the regular protection.

The thought is a relief.

At the library, she tugs her cap lower when she notices two teen girls give her a second look. She prays they don’t recognize her. They eventually return to their books, and Clarke exhales a sigh of relief.

She makes her way through the library, first perusing the sections that Bellamy used to browse the most, but then just starts a methodical search through each floor.

She finds him finally in the children’s section, sitting on the floor of an aisle with his legs stretched out in front of him, an open book in his lap. He looks up when she walks towards him, and does a double take. Clarke tucks her sunglasses and cap away and steps towards him.

“What are you doing here?” she whispers, although there’s no one around this section of the library right now.

He replies equally softly. “Returning a book.” He doesn’t look like he’s actually returning it, though. He’s just reading it. He shows her the cover—it’s a children’s book, colourful illustrations and all. Then he glances at the clock on the wall. “I have a debrief meeting at Eligius. I should probably get going.”

He’s avoiding her eyes. She steps in front of him. “Wait.”

She waits until he makes eye contact to say, “I broke it off with Finn. For good.”

His eyes widen slightly. He sets the book down and stands up. “Clarke…”

“I told him I’m never going to marry him. I can’t lie to myself anymore. I don’t care if he’s my soulmate. I want you, and I’m determined to make it work. So _listen_ to me, Bellamy, because even if you tell me no, I’m still not going back to Finn. That’s my choice. It’s you or nothing.”

Even if it defies logic. Defies fate, even. Even if the universe continues to tell her it’s a disaster. But Bellamy and his honest heart, his selfless way of being, the seemingly endless capacity of his love for people around him has inspired her; changed her; and forced her see the world through a different lens. How could that be a disaster?

She prepares for his response. That he might tell her she’s being stupid. But instead he says, “Alright.”

She blinks. “Really?”

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking.” Bellamy takes a breath, and then it all comes out, a rare rush of feeling: “How many times over our lives could we have walked away from each other for good? But we didn’t. We always end up back here, you and me. Because we make that choice. We do it every day. And I’ve let the world convince me that my choices didn’t matter for too long. But if they didn’t matter, I wouldn’t still be standing here next to you after twenty years… So screw the soulmarks, Clarke.” He takes a step towards her. “I don’t need a tattoo to tell me how much I love you.”

Something grows and bursts in her chest. A pressurized ache she hadn’t realized was there for all this time, until it’s gone, and all that’s left is a beautiful sense of relief. Clarke finds that she doesn’t need any more words, because he’s said it all.

They came from vastly different worlds. They didn’t get each other right away. Even to this day, they have to make an effort to understand each other’s lives sometimes. They had to try, and try, and try, and each time, it was a choice to do so. She’s been choosing Bellamy Blake her entire life without realizing.

She pushes off to hug him, and to choose him all over again.

Their arms encircle each other, in the middle of the aisle, and as always, he feels like home. She doesn’t want to let go, not ever. But he does first, and then he presses her against the stacks.

Book spines dig into her shoulders, into the back of her head, but she barely feels it. She tilts her head up to him and their mouths meet. He cradles her face with both his hands, palms spanning over her jaw and fingers threading in her hair. She clutches onto his wrists. It’s a soft sort of kiss, the kind that is for simple affection, the kind that curls her toes in her shoes and makes her stomach swoop giddily like she’s fifteen again kissing him on a rooftop.

His tongue traces the seam of her lips. She angles her head to kiss him deeper, at least until she hears a quiet gasp.

They jolt apart and look to the end of the aisle. The two teenage girls Clarke had spotted earlier are standing there with wide eyes. Busted.

“Uh,” one of them stammers, eyes darting between them, “sorry to interrupt, we just—couldn’t help but notice you came in here and we were going to ask for an autograph, but, uh, never mind—”

Clarke smiles her practiced smile. “It’s fine. I’ll do it.”

Bellamy takes a large step back from Clarke as one of the girls hands her a phone to sign the case. Clarke does, and goes to hand it back, but the girl looks at Bellamy tentatively.

“Can I get your autograph too?”

Bellamy’s expression is priceless. Clarke can’t help but smother a giggle.

The girl seems discouraged. “I’m sorry, never mind—”

He reaches for the phone case. “No, no. It’s alright.” He picks up the marker. Clarke goes on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear.

“Make sure it’s not your legal signature. Because that’s going to be all over the internet in five minutes.” A tip she’d learned early on to avoid fraud, from her father.

“Jesus Christ,” Bellamy mutters, and she watches him make up a signature on the spot.

“Can we get a picture, too?” the other girl asks.

“Yeah, sure,” Clarke says. They wrap their arms around each other and take the photos. The girls thank them and leave.

The two of them stay in the aisle until they’re gone, studying the floor.

After a minute Bellamy looks up at her, voice pitched almost too low to hear. “They’re still watching us from two aisles down.”

“I know.” Clarke wonders if they’re filming. She also finds she doesn’t really care. She’s too deliriously happy.

“They saw us kiss. Guaranteed, they’re going to tell the internet.” Bellamy studies her as if looking for a reaction. “Are you ready for more rumours about us?”

“No,” Clarke says, and watches him flinch back a bit, at least until she adds, “Because I’m tired of rumours. Let’s give them the truth.”

She presses close to him again, loops her arms around his neck. Bellamy’s eyes glimmer with something mischievous. His hands curve around her waist.

This time when they kiss, Clarke exaggerates it just a tiny bit, arching into him. Always quick on the uptake, Bellamy bows her backwards just a bit, hitching her leg up on his hip, and she giggles against his mouth, rather feeling like this candid photo is going to end up looking like the cover of an old-timey romance novel.

Clarke hears a sharp intake of breath from the next aisle. A faint shutter click. They kiss for several more seconds, and then make it proper and dirty because at this point might as well make it a production. Let the world know the truth; everyone would’ve found out anyway. But at least now it’ll be on _their_ terms.

When they disengage, they grin at each other, faces only inches away. Bellamy doesn’t let her go.

“Come to my house tonight,” she whispers, arms still around his neck. “When your meeting’s over. I don’t care how long it goes, just come.”

“I take it you won’t get a restraining order.” His voice is wry.

“Just the opposite.” She draws herself closer, lips brushing his ear. “I’ll make sure you never leave.”

—

Needless to say, it’s very difficult for Bellamy to focus on the questioning at Eligius. There’s a debrief session with the rest of the team. Bellamy is reamed out for not following directions. Then he’s asked to explain what happened. He tells them everything, repeating what he’d said during police questioning, including owning up to killing Josephine. He’s not being charged anyhow, given the circumstances.

The panel questioning him keeps coming back to the fact that he went rogue and he loses his patience, because damn it, he wants to go home to Clarke. “If you want to fire me, fire me. But don’t go around in circles.”

They keep doing it, though, and by the end of the inquiry nothing is even decided and it’s fucking midnight. The questioning will continue the following day.

In the hallway afterwards, Pike catches up to him, and speaks in low tones. “You should know. Some of us want you to stay, but some want you gone.” Not surprising. He knows half this panel has been itching to get rid of him for years. With his messy history with so many of their high-profile clients, he’s a black mark on the Eligius reputation. Pike goes on. “I think that ultimately, the powers that be _really_ don’t want to keep you. Especially after all this with Clarke Griffin.”

His voice is apologetic. But Bellamy had expected that sort of outcome. He looks up at Pike. “Let me finish my contract. Then I’ll sign the resignation papers myself.”

Pike seems a bit taken aback by this. “Are you sure? You shouldn’t feel pressured to leave this career. I’m willing to go to bat for you. Anya too, believe it or not.”

“Thank you, sir.” Bellamy smiles. “But I’ve got other plans.”

—

Bellamy shows up at the new Griffin mansion in the middle of night, and sure enough, he’s let through the gates without having to say a word.

He jogs up the front steps, but before he can even raise his hand and knock on the ornate door, Clarke flings it open.

She’s wearing a gauzy, expensive looking knee-length floral print dress. Before he can question her on why she’s wearing that in the middle of the night, she flings her arms around his neck and tells him to come inside.

With interlaced fingers, he follows her. They’re alone in the foyer.

“Staff went home for the night,” she tells him. He lets her tug him along in the hallway, at least until he sees a bouquet of flowers on the table. He stops dead in his tracks. They look fresh.

Clarke follows his gaze. Sighs. “Finn brought those earlier today. Right before I told him to leave.”

He stares at the flowers, a familiar guilt starting to rise in his gut. Clarke said no to her soulmate because of _him_?

“Bellamy,” Clarke says sternly. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

What comes from his mouth is the stupidest possible thing. “He makes you laugh.”

She blinks. “You make me laugh, too.”

“Not like he does.”

Clarke actually rolls her eyes. “So what if he makes me laugh? Do you think I’m in love with every comedian I watch on TV?”

He glares at her. “It’s not like that. It means he makes you happy in a way I can’t.”

“No one, and I mean no one, makes me happy like you do.” She grabs his hand. “I _like_ that we don’t always have to laugh. I like that we can talk about serious things, too. About anything. I like that I can be every part of myself with you.”

Her voice is so sincere. The way she's looking at him, as always, feels like more than he deserves. Like she sees something beautiful in him that she's in love with.

He’s fucking terrified of this decision they’ve made together. Choosing her is hard; not because he doesn't love her, but just the opposite. And the thought that he might break her because they weren't made for each other is unimaginable.

"I'm not going to break your heart," he vows, more to himself than her. "I'm not going to hurt you. Never."

Clarke studies him in the dark for a moment. Then, her voice becomes gentle. "I know you aren't. I've never once thought you would hurt me."

He thinks back to the times he’s made his mother cry. Clarke shouldn’t be so confident. Because neither she nor Bellamy know what kind of person he'll become. If, in the future, he'll become the kind of man who takes out his anger at the world on someone who isn't his soulmate. If he'll stop leaving love marks and leave real bruises instead.

"Promise me that you'd leave me if I did," he says hoarsely, studying the floor. "Promise me you'll never let me hurt you."

A beat.

"Look at me," Clarke says. He's compelled to lift his head. She leans in close and takes his face in her hands. Her eyes are resolute and clear, her words fierce. "I'm not Aurora, Bellamy. And you're not your father, and you're not any of her boyfriends, either. You're you. And _you_ get to decide what you are. No one and nothing else."

That hits him right in the chest. He gets the feeling she's not just talking to him.

Clarke continues to study him, and the intensity is almost too much right now. He clears his throat. “Why are you wearing a dress? It’s one in the morning.”

She blinks and lets go of him, looking down at herself. The dress keeps drawing his eye. It’s loose but clings to certain places, only offering the suggestion of the curves he knows intimately beneath. The patterning is intricate. He bets it cost thousands.

“You said you hated seeing me ruin my expensive dresses,” she says, reading his mind. “I figured I could give you the honour for once. _You_ can ruin this one, instead.”

He blinks, and she’s got a dark glint in her eye, and _oh_ , they’re doing this, are they?

Holding her gaze, he places his hand on her hip. Slowly, he gathers the fabric in his fist, hitching the dress up until he can slip his hand under it.

He pauses here. Because he doesn’t feel the waistband of panties he’s expecting. Just the smooth skin of her hip.

She lifts her chin, daring him to ask. She widens her stance a little, daring him to confirm it for himself. He doesn’t, although his heart is now beginning to kick into a rhythm.

Under the dress, he skims his hand up her waist, then to her breast, where he traces the band of her bra. He recognizes it without seeing it; the lacy blue one, which unhooks from the front.

A sigh escapes Clarke’s lips. He takes his hand away, out of her dress. She looks disappointed.

“Touch me.” Her voice is commanding.

“I don’t take orders from you anymore.” He leans in and runs his nose down her throat. “Unless I want to.”

Then he thrusts his hand between her legs and cups her. Fuck. She’s definitely not wearing panties.

He rubs his palm over her center, and she ruts into his hand. She’s drenched already. “When’d you take these off, huh?”

Clarke reaches to touch his face, her nails dragging down his jaw. “I was trying to wait for you, but you took _so_ long to come home.”

He sucks in a breath. She’s got that wicked look in her eyes, her voice breathier than usual. Clarke got all dressed up in an expensive dress and no panties just to turn him on. She’s playing with him.

He gets a delighted thrill in his chest at the knowledge. God knows he has wanted to have this with Clarke forever. Sex for fun, to sleep together because they want it and not just because they _need_ it.

“I thought about you while I was getting off,” she adds when he doesn’t move. “In case you needed clarification.”

Smartass. With just the hand between her legs, he pushes on her pubic bone, guiding her backwards, until she’s taken several tiny skittering steps back to the wall.

He gets right up in her face. “Did you think about me when I was gone? After you fired me?”

“I—” Her breath hitches as he dips a finger into her. She spreads her legs even more to allow him better access. “Every night. All year.”

“Every night,” he repeats slowly, punctuating each word with a deliberate pump of his finger inside her. They can both hear how wet she is. “How about when he was fucking you?”

She meets his eyes. “ _Especially_ then.”

He pulls his hand away. Her dress falls back into place. Something flickers in Clarke’s eyes, like she’s unsure if this was the right thing to say.

But Bellamy simply drops to his knees, takes her right leg and throws it over her shoulder. He bunches up her dress and pushes it up her hips.

“Here. Hold this.” She does, gathering the material of her dress up. He waits until it’s all out of his way, then he grabs onto her thighs and licks right up into her.

Clarke gasps, hips bucking, and he tightens his grip to keep her in place. But it’s difficult to keep her there. The more he sucks at her, plunges his fingers back into her, the more she grinds on him, nearly smothering him, and he doesn’t mind one bit.

Eventually she lets go of her dress and fists her hands in his hair, her body arching over him, and the fabric flutters back over his shoulders but he really can’t bring himself to give a shit. He can’t get enough of the way she tastes, the way she clenches down on his fingers like she wants to keep him there. Especially the way she says his name over and over and over, getting louder and incomprehensible the more he winds her up.

He could really get used to her saying his name like that.

When she crashes over with a loud cry, he sucks especially hard one last time and then immediately pulls away. Everything, his mouth and his fingers, and he lets her leg slip back over his shoulder.

It would be much more satisfying to feel her contract around his fingers, but he wants to play with her a bit too, see how good she got it. If she can hold herself up.

She does, but her knees buckle a bit, and she slides down the wall an inch or two before she seems to find her balance again. She’s panting, still making those pleased little sounds in the back of her throat as she slowly comes back to reality. He bets if he put his fingers back inside her she would still be fluttering.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, watching her flushed, satisfied face. Her hair’s sticking to her cheeks. That damn dress is so wrinkled and bunched up around her hips, by both of their hands.

After several moments, her eyes open lazily, and she meets his gaze with a dark one of her own. Her voice becomes husky.

“Did _you_ think about us doing this, when you were gone?”

He laughs, lowly. “Clarke, I’ve thought about us doing this since we were teenagers.”

She bites her lip and her lashes lower, and she smiles in that cat-like way he suspects she fucking _knows_ has turned him on since they were that age. “Well, come up here and get it, then.”

He does.

He thought she’d be lazy after what he did to her, but she’s ferocious when their mouths meet again, licking into his mouth, her hands all over him, feeling him up. She tugs him in by his belt buckle and while they kiss, he dimly registers how quickly she undoes his belt, like she still remembers exactly how it goes.

She doesn’t just stop at loosening the belt. She pulls it straight out of the belt loops and tosses it across the floor.

He breaks away from the kiss only to look how far she’s thrown it and chuckle. “Was that necessary?”

He stops laughing when Clarke unbuttons his pants and slips her hand inside.

“Bellamy,” she purrs. “Are you _always_ this happy to see me?”

“Fuck,” he breathes, incapable of banter right now. “Yes.” He braces his hands on the wall on either side of her head and lets himself feel it, drops his head down when she starts to stroke him.

“Look at me,” she whispers, and he does. Her gaze is ravenous, near-obsessively watching his every reaction to her touch. Impossibly she looks more turned on right now than she did when he had his head buried between her legs. Yeah, he’s not going to last if he thinks about that too much.

They don’t make it to her bed. The hallway it is, he decides when she yanks his pants over his hips, down his ass. They don’t waste time with the rest of their clothes, not when they’ve been desperate for each other for over two years. Clarke throws her leg over his hip, tilts her hips towards him, loops her arms around his neck. He slides into her so easy it’s like they never stopped.

Clarke makes a gasping, strangled sound. She tries to wrap her legs around her waist, but the dress she’s wearing is a little restrictive. He grabs her leg and yanks it up. They both hear the tearing seam of her dress. He really doesn’t give a damn about it. The only thing that matters is how _good_ she feels.

She locks her legs around his back, and he slams into her again, and again. The sound they make against the wall is obscene. He kind of loves it.

She’s sliding down the wall a bit. He readjusts his grip, hitching her back up to new heights before resuming.

“Oh, my _god,_ ” Clarke moans at the new angle. Her head falls forward, onto his shoulder.

“Just Bellamy is fine.”

“Hilarious… _aaah, Bellamy_.”

“That’s right. Now you’ve got it.”

He hears her laugh, before it transforms into a squeak. Her nails dig near painfully into his shoulders, and he pushes into her without any control at all, he would be embarrassed in any other situation at how fast he’s spiralling, but he’s just _completely_ lost it, because he never thought he’d get to be inside Clarke ever again.

She comes apart around him, and he’s not far behind.

They drift back down to reality. The sounds of their panting fill the otherwise quiet hallway.

Clarke lifts her head off his shoulder and leans it against the wall, raking her hair away from her face. Her legs loosen around his waist, and she slides one foot back to the floor. The other remains hooked around his waist, where he uses it to hold them in place, because he doesn't want to let go of her, doesn’t want to leave her body just yet.

Clarke turns her head and her eyes flix on something on the floor. He follows her gaze. A painting nearby on the wall has fallen off its hook and hit the floor. The frame is splintered in half.

Clarke laughs softly. “Kane is going to kill me.”

“It’s _your_ house.” He slides his hand up her leg, through the broken seam of her dress that is torn all the way up her hip.

“But that’s his painting. He bought it for my mom and framed it himself.”

“He can send me the damn bill.” He plants a sloppy kiss on Clarke’s cheek. She holds him there to whisper in his ear.

“There’s even more paintings in my bedroom. And so many more expensive dresses I want you to ruin.”

This time, they make it to bed.

—

It’s only a few hours later when Clarke wakes with a sudden thought. She looks next to her in bed. Bellamy is sleeping on his stomach, the sheets gathered around his hips so she can see the skin all from his muscled back to his neck, and to his cheek pressed to the pillows. His hair’s in his eyes. She has the urge to push it back, but refrains.

She slips out of bed as quietly as she can. She puts on a robe before leaving the room, and heads to one of the storage rooms in the house, where her father’s old movies and things are kept, along with a few other belongings.

She finds Wells’ chess set easily. It’s been gathering dust in the corner. She blows some dust off, then brings the whole thing back to her bedroom and sets it on the table by the window. She takes a moment to admire it in the slowly intensifying light of the rising sun.

No more guilt about sorting out Bellamy and Wells. She has room for both of them in her heart.

When she returns to bed, she notices her phone lighting up silently from the beside table. It probably has been going all night. Those photos of her and Bellamy kissing must be everywhere by now.

She looks at her phone anyway, at the text that lights up the screen. Roan.

 _Congratulations, but don’t even think of inviting me to the wedding. I’m sick of you two_.

She grins and clambers back into bed to wrap herself around Bellamy again.

—

FIVE YEARS LATER

—

Clarke shifts nervously from foot to foot in her high heels. She doesn’t know why she’s this nervous, except she’s afraid Bellamy’s going to be mad at her for what she’s done.

And she doesn’t want to ruin this special day. He just graduated with his Bachelor’s degree in English Literature, after all.

She’s so proud of him for that.

He approaches her now, after returning his gown. He looks a little grumpy, tugging on his tie. “Ceremony was too damn long, remind me why we came to this?”

She smiles as they set off together back to her BMW. “Because you deserved to come to your graduation after everything we’ve been through.”

It’s been a long five years. He’d applied to schools on his own terms and resigned from Eligius when he got in. She finished med school and entered residency. It’s been hectic as all hell. But they helped each other. Bellamy made her meals for her on-call days, and once again let her practice on him whenever she needed to. Clarke proofread his papers, talked through things with him when he was stuck on his thesis, even though none of it really made sense to her. She tried to make sense of it anyway. She sat there and let him practice his presentations on her, and tried to think of questions the actual professors might ask so he could be better prepared.

She did everything she could to help him, and he her. They stayed out of each others’ way during exam periods, which was the best kind of help during those times.

And now he’s done. Although, not really. He’s already been accepted to an MA in literature and cultural studies. So it’s really just the beginning of a long road, but it’ll be worth it.

Clarke drives them downtown, where they’ve got a dinner reservation. Bellamy says, “This better not be an expensive restaurant.”

“It’s not.”

She can feel him giving her a sidelong glance. “It’s not about the price, Clarke. It’s just, you know how I feel about expensive food. It tastes like shit.”

She grins. “Still haven’t forgot the time I force fed you foie gras?”

“What else do you think I have nightmares about?”

Still, she suspects there’s at least a part of him that hates it just because it’s pricey. Bellamy has become more reasonable over the years, but they have an agreement where Clarke only buys necessities—basic living expenditures, and the house they live in. As for frivolous gifts… he still doesn’t like those.

She chews her lip. He notices.

“What’s going on in your head?”

“Nothing.” She scrambles with a topic to distract him. “You know, Finn invited us to his movie premiere.”

She’s got her eyes on the road, but hears his long exhale as he looks out his open window. “Fuck that guy.” He says it in a joking way, the way he’s said it many times over the last five years.

She reaches over to jab his shoulder. “You know I have to go. The movie’s about my dad.” Hollywood had approached the family a few years ago, wanting to produce a biopic. And Clarke’s mom, who was out of prison by that time, gave her consent. Of course Finn got cast.

He’d called Clarke up to get her blessing. Bellamy had suggested she say no, for no particular reason except to piss him off. Clarke had ignored this and given Finn the go ahead. They’re on friendly terms, regardless of what the tabloids seem to think.

“Fine,” Bellamy says eventually. “But only if he lets us bring Octavia’s kids along. Ever since they found out I know him they’ve been begging to meet him. God knows why.”

He sounds all annoyed, but Clarke’s not fooled whatsoever. Bellamy loves his nephew and niece dearly. The first time she saw him scoop them up in his arms, she’d felt another part of her heart grow, endless in its capacity to feel affection for him. And sometimes it gave her other thoughts too, but she has never shared those.

“Finn won’t mind,” Clarke agrees. She pulls onto the street the restaurant is on. It’s a hole-in-the-wall place, not the sort of place you would normally get a reservation, but, well, Clarke had really wanted to guarantee a secluded table for them.

Bellamy frowns when she parks on the side of the street. “There’s probably lots of space in the parking lot.”

“No, it’s okay,” Clarke says quickly. “I’ve already parked now. Let’s just go eat.”

He gives her another odd look but to her relief, says nothing.

Dinner is great. Seafood. They take forever to eat but only because they keep talking, and then chuckling over something stupid, and then talking, quite seriously, about something else stupid. Then Clarke tells him she’s proud of him and he looks like he doesn’t know what to do with the information, much to her amusement. He abruptly switches topics to how Miller and Bryan have bought a house on the lake, and have chickens, and that they’ve been invited to visit.

When the waitress comes with the bill, the sun has set. When she puts it down, the conversation ends abruptly.

“Don’t even think about it,” Bellamy says once the waitress has left, pulling the bill towards him.

He’s ridiculous. “It’s your graduation day, I’m not allowed to pay for dinner?”

“That’s right. Not when you pay for _everything else_.” He fishes his wallet from his pocket. Clarke lets him. She has to butter him up as much as possible. She tries to think about how to go about saying it as he pays the bill. As they rise from the table, she clears her throat.

“Bellamy.”

He goes still. His eyes flicker up to hers, and his jaw sets. He looks like he’s bracing for something. And she realizes then that her anxiety all night has not gone unnoticed.

And no, no that wasn’t what she intended to make him feel at all. She quickly grabs his hand.

“I have a surprise for you.”

He relaxes infinitesimally. But still eyes her. “A surprise.”

“Yes.”

When she doesn’t elaborate, he steps closer, deliberately puts his hand on her hip, a heavy and warm weight. “Is it under this dress?” His breath is hot against her ear. She shivers and slides her hands down his chest. God, she should not be thinking the things she’s thinking in the middle of a crowded family restaurant.

She does fully intend to give him that sort of present tonight, but later. “No, it’s outside.”

His brow furrows. She takes a deep breath and tugs at his hand.

“Come on.”

She takes him through the other entrance, the one that leads to the parking lot, and he lets her tug him along. At least until they reach the corner of the parking lot and he stops dead in his tracks.

It’s right there, sitting in a parking space under the shade of a tree. The Rover.

Clarke looks between him and the vehicle. He appears to have been rendered speechless.

“When you sold the Rover back to the mechanic, I bought it back,” she tells him quietly. She’d kept it. For years. Knowing he wouldn’t have wanted her to. But she was basically waiting to refurbish it. It looks pretty much the same on the outside, except the parts are shinier, the paint retouched, the headlights fixed. Everything under the hood is new. The shitty interior is the same. She’d gone to great lengths, thrown large sums of money around, to make sure it looked and felt like the jeep Bellamy had loved.

He draws closer to the vehicle, still staring at the thing with a wide-eyed expression, and it makes her nervous. “Let me explain. I know you don’t like it when I buy you expensive things, but your other car broke down, so you can’t be angry, okay? You need a way to get around—”

Bellamy grabs her around the waist and pushes her up against the Rover’s driver side door to kiss her.

It’s a hard but brief kiss, and when he lets her go he says raggedly, “I love it.”

She exhales a huge sigh of relief. “Then here.” She fishes in her purse and holds out the key.

He takes it and lets go of her. He opens up the back. They both peer inside into the wide interior.

“Good memories in here,” Bellamy says, giving her a rather rakish grin. She thinks for a second he’s going to suggest making a few more memories, but then he closes the door. “Let’s go for a drive.”

—

It’s fully dark by the time they’re on the highway, Bellamy’s testing every function in the thing, the speed and smoothness of the ride, each individual gear. All the windows are open, the sunroof too. He’s completely silent, forearms draped over the wheel as they go down a long stretch of highway, but Clarke can tell he’s having the time of his life right now. She sits next to him with her feet propped up on the dash and lets him at it, while reading through texts on her phone that she’s been neglecting.

“Roan says he’s driving through town next week,” she informs Bellamy. Bellamy keeps his eyes trained ahead.

“Tell him to keep driving.”

Clarke texts Roan back with an invitation to come visit them. Then after a while of answering messages, she switches to the internet, scrolls through headlines. She grins at one she sees in passing.

“Hey, it says on TMZ that we split up after another big fight.”

He pretends to hit the wheel. “Jesus, Clarke, you’re leaving me _again_? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I’m not a monster, Bellamy. It’s your graduation day. I was waiting for tomorrow.”

They grin. After five years, they can poke fun at it more than they used to.

The tabloids and celebrity experts still love to pick them apart. Especially at the beginning, they’d painted Clarke as a villain, leaving Finn behind, but also predicting she’d choose him by the end of the year. They’re still pushing back those predictions.

Clarke stretches her arms out in front of her; her wrists, still as blank as they were five years ago. Same as his.

“I wonder what the universe thinks of us,” she muses. “Going against it all the time, every single day.”

“I couldn’t care less what the universe thinks,” Bellamy replies. “Screw fate. We’re telling our own damn story.”

Clarke puts her phone away and leans her head out the window, into the sweet summer air whipping her hair around. She would be lying if she said she didn't wake up sometimes and look at both their wrists. Like maybe one day fate would confirm this was the right choice. It never does.

But so what if the universe doesn't like it? Every day she proves her love for Bellamy is stronger than the universe.

“Clarke,” Bellamy says suddenly, and she twists to look at him, because there’s something to his voice. His eyes are trained on the road, but his grip on the wheel is very tight suddenly. “Do you want to get married?”

She stares at him, lips parting in shock.

For the past five years, Clarke has been perfectly content with what they had, and knew she always would be. She doesn’t need a certificate any more than she needs a soulmark. Indeed, she’s always suspected Bellamy might never want to marry again, not after the guilt of his last marriage and the trauma of his mother’s. And she was fine with that. But here he is, asking now. Her heart swells and threatens to burst.

She tries not to show these emotions on her face. She doesn’t want to make a big deal of it, even though it _is_ a big deal. For him to ask so casually, today of all days, means something. It means his hope now outweighs his guilt. And that he finally feels like he has something to offer. It means he thinks he has a future. That _they_ do.

Bellamy clears his throat. “I don’t have a ring yet. So if you don’t want—if you need to think about it, that’s fine—”

Clarke leans in to kiss his cheek. “Yes, Bellamy. I want to marry you.”

The tension that’s been building in his shoulders all day melts away at once. He exhales. “I did have a ring in mind,” he admits gruffly. “But I wasn’t sure you’d like it.”

Based on that statement alone, she’s certain she will. “Okay. We can go look at it later.” She looks back out the window and grins happily up at the stars, at one star in particular. “Whenever you’re ready.”

— END —

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this story. It’s been such a rewarding experience to revisit bellarke fanfic. I mean, yes, it sometimes made me want to chuck my laptop out the window, but that’s besides the point. I find it funny how much of what made bellarke iconic—the changes made to source material, the actors’ chemistry (and eventual marriage omg), their electric formative scenes that were perhaps more electric because the show _wasn’t_ trying to make a romance—turned out to be the perfect storm that this show never intended to create, or knew quite what to do with. Sometimes even denied outright lol. I like to think this fic is an homage to that sort of love; the one that wasn’t meant to be, but happened anyway.
> 
> I crave human interaction now more than ever, so if you have the time and inclination to leave a comment (of any length), you’ll make my day. If you want to but don’t know what to say, tell me a line or scene you liked! Or whatever you want to say really. As always, my greatest hope is just that you enjoyed reading it.
> 
> @wellsjahasghost on tumblr


End file.
